


The Thickness of Blood

by LadySilver



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Tomorrow People (2013)
Genre: AU Arrow post season 1, AU TP pre-pilot, Amell Wednesdays, Case Fic, Community: longfic_bingo, Cousins, Crossover, Crossovers by LS, Exhaustion, Gen, Identity Porn, Secret Identity, Spoilers for the Tomorrow People CW, Superpowers, Trust Issues, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/LadySilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Oliver and Stephen learn that secrets run in the family, they also learn that there's more than one way to fight a war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally started in July 2013, several months before the first (and only) season of _The Tomorrow People_ (2013) began, and was based on the premise that Stephen Jameson and Oliver Queen are cousins just as their respective actors are. Chapters 1-5 were written either before or during the show's run, while chapters 6 and on were written afterward.
> 
> Information about TTP was culled from ads that are available [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TDKDqoklEI), [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsjejXi5mGg), and [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXKc0t0Jd6Y), and a leaked draft of the pilot script. Naturally, the actual show went its own direction. Details about how the characters' powers work and their relationships to and among each other are either the product of guesswork from the limited canon information of the time or was made up based on the 1973 and/or 1992 versions of the show. Anything in this story that doesn't mesh with the canonical information should be considered AU. 
> 
> Thanks to htbthomas and tptigger who egged me into writing this crossover and to htbthomas for the brainstorming and beta reading, as well. Thanks also to everyone who has, or is, taking the time to read the story, especially with the long hiatus between chapters 5 and 6. As always, questions, comments, observations, concrit, squee, etc. are all welcomed and appreciated.

The problem was not that Stephen couldn't escape; the problem was that escaping would lead to far greater danger later. They had captured him because they thought they knew what he could do. He couldn't prove them right.

With the echo of the door slamming still ringing through the room, Stephen struggled against the bonds that locked his wrists and feet together. He was hog-tied, and only a few minutes of being wrenched into that position had his nerves sending warning sparks of pain through his limbs and his back threatening to never forgive him.

His cheek still throbbed from the back-hand blow his masked captor had delivered, and fear gripped his whole body. All his captor had told him was that Stephen needed to do nothing more than cooperate—though he refused to answer Stephen's frantic questions about what that cooperation would entail.

The captor's thoughts, on the other hand, gave away a lot more: They were looking for a Tomorrow Person. They knew about Stephen's father and knew that Stephen might be one—had the mental illness history that pointed in that direction. They just didn't know for sure if he was.

The fact that Stephen was Moira Queen's nephew—albeit from the poor side of the family—was merely a pleasant surprise.

The concrete floor was cold and hard under him, the room around him colder and damp. The building smelled of mildew and neglect, and had the air of a place that had been abandoned before it was ever used.

[Stephen, where are you?] John's telepathic send appeared in Stephen's mind less as the words that made up the question and more as the concern and suspicion behind it. Not bad for someone thinking at him from the other side of the country.

“Can't—” he started, then cut himself off. Can't talk, can't move, can't respond.

The guard at the single door out of this room shifted his stance, the gun cradled in his arms the centerpiece of his position. The guard was a tall, thickly built white man with thinning brown hair and hard eyes. Though Stephen wasn't the mind-reader Cara was, he could read the man's thoughts clearly: Shoot if you see anything out of the ordinary.

Stephen figured that appearing to talk to himself would definitely count as “out of the ordinary.” He offered the guard a conciliatory smile. They were already well past the point in their short relationship where Stephen demanded answers and begged for mercy and the guard stoically ignored him

As expected, the guard's only response was to blink. Once.

[Stephen, are you in trouble?] Cara interjected, her voice even clearer in his mind. Her stronger-than-typical talent for mind-reading made her telepathy easier to understand than any of the others'. With her in the link, it also meant that he didn't have to speak out loud to make himself heard back.

[Nothing I can't handle,] he answered, adding a quick mental picture of his situation. John and Cara's worry bloomed bright in his mind. He tipped his chin down and wiggled his body like it would help get some circulation to his arms. In truth, the movement was meant to disguise any expressions he was unable to keep off his face. [Don't worry about me.]

[You've been captured,] Cara pointed out. Then added, with a lilt that Stephen could easily visualize as an eyeroll, a sarcastic, [Again.]

[I know. I'm handling it.] _Sort of_ , he added to himself. _So much sort of._ The bonds were pulled tight, leaving Stephen with only the ability to scoot in short bursts across the floor, which he really had no desire to do considering the gun pointed at him. [Stay where you are,] he insisted. The last thing he needed was Cara or John teleporting in. If his captors needed proof of Stephen's powers, his new friends' sudden appearances in a locked, guarded room would be more than enough. [I mean it. I have a plan.]

[No you don't,] Cara responded.

Stephen had to fight to not let his head drop back in exasperation. Of course she would have seen right through his lie. She had tried to explain to him that telepathy wasn't just mind-to-mind speech, but he'd never had the need before to test whether he could lie that way. So, it turned out he couldn't. Noted.

[Are you sure you don't need help?] John asked.

Stephen had to mull that over for a moment. The truth was, he did need help. But the help his fellow Tomorrow People had to offer was the wrong kind. Unfortunately, the only other plan he had was to sit tight and hope his captors would convince themselves that they were wrong and would let him go.

He refused to consider that they could just kill him when they got bored.

Maybe being related to a bunch of billionaires would finally be of some use to him.

[I'm sure,] he answered, at last. A twist of his shoulders sent him tumbling onto his side with a loud oomph. The scant protection his jeans and hoodie offered against the chill of the air would not save him from a giant bruise on his shoulder. “I'm fine,” he called out loud. “Probably gonna be sore for a couple days, and....” He trailed off when the guard took a threatening step closer to him.

The guard's boots thumped heavily on the floor in that one step, ringing through the room. His expression was set hard, unamused. He didn't have to move the gun for its presence to be re-announced.

Stephen shuddered.

There was a moment of silence and then John came back, worry and resignation lacing through his response, but no fight. [Fine.] There was a flash of something too fast for Stephen to make out. It felt like the kinetic force of a rubber-band snapping in his mind, leaving the residual feeling that John knew a lot more than he was letting on. [We'll play it your way. Shout when you need to be rescued.]

With that, John cut off the link amongst them.

The thoughts of the guard, and the dozens of other people in the building, raced in to fill the absence. His powers were still too new, too raw, to make sense of the ricochets of thought-noise like a radio being turned on and off. The noise had him gritting his teeth and wishing he could do more than bide his time.

The lights went out with a flicker and a soft pop.

Stephen stopped moving. Physically. He tried to concentrate, to cast open his mind and focus in on the thoughts surrounding him. To figure out what was going on. Static-like bursts of panic and fear flickered across his mind, but he couldn't grab any of them long enough to figure out what they were about. He felt sweat break out across his forehead and the chill of the floor creep up through his skin.

“What are you doing?” the gunman demanded. He aimed his gun at Stephen, but didn't pull the trigger. Not yet, anyway. Soft light still filtered in through the dirt encrusted windows that lined the far wall of the room. It was enough to see by, if not enough for comfort.

“It's not me,” Stephen replied. “I didn't do it!” He wanted to point out that the light switch was next to the door, and he very much was not, but he managed to bite back the sarcasm before it got him shot. He tucked himself into the smallest ball he could given how he was tied, and reached for the part of his mind that would let him teleport.

The door slammed open. The gunman turned and unleashed a shot into the hallway. A soft _thwip_ interrupted a second try. He hit the ground with a thunk, his form distorted with what looked like a stick poking out of his chest. His gun clattered uselessly next to his still form.

Stephen shut his eyes then and forced himself to breathe. One thought came clearly to his mind: rescue.

A tall, shrouded figure entered the room, a bow in his hands.

Stephen's breath was sucked out of him. He'd had heard about this guy, the vigilante. Everyone in Starling City knew of him and spoke about him, their opinions strong and often trapped between fearful and appreciative. At first, Stephen had thought it was some kind of practical joke being played on him and Luca, his brother, the poor schlubs visiting from out-of-town and in need of a little chain yanking.

And then he'd turned on the local news and discovered that the vigilante was no joke. On screen, he was an imposing figure, if grainy security film and police sketches were anything to go by: Tall and broad shouldered, and always keeping his face obscured under a green hood.

In person, he was all that and _more_. The intensity of his thoughts struck Stephen like a physical blow, rocking him backward. Stephen's tongue darted over his dry, cracked lips as he processed the impossible information.

The last time the Jamesons had been to Starling City was for his Uncle Robert and cousin Oliver's funeral. The last time Stephen had seen Oliver alive, he'd been barely eight years old and far more interested in exploring the mansion than in spending time with a stuck-up cousin who was more than twice his age. Seeing Oliver again after so long came with the expectation of physical changes, especially after what Oliver had been through. The biggest surprise there was how much Stephen had closed the gap in their heights.

Then there was Oliver's mind. The focus and determination in it was unlike anything Stephen had encountered, even in his uncle Jedikiah, who was the most determined person he'd ever met—up until walking into the Queen household and discovering what a calling truly felt like.

“Are you OK?” the vigilante growled. His voice was deep and synthesized, not at all like Oliver's, which Stephen figured had to be the point. It also sounded dangerous. If he didn't already know he was safe with this guy, he'd be flinging him across the room with the full force of his telekinesis.

“I'm fine,” Stephen replied, surprised at how different it felt to say it this time. He tried to jiggle his arms to show why he wasn't contributing to his own escape, and realized in that moment that he'd stopped feeling them a long time ago. Only the ache of wrenched muscles through his shoulders let him know that he hadn't completely disassociated from his body.

”I'm going to get you out of here,” the vigilante stated. “Hold still.” Keeping his face carefully averted, and his bow held in ready position, he crossed the room to where Stephen sat. He crouched in front of him, head bowed so that all Stephen could clearly see was the top of his hood and the quiver of arrows strapped to his back. Then he made a strange twisting gesture with one hand. Only as the plastic ties hit the floor with dull clinks did Stephen realize that the bonds had been cut away. He still couldn't feel any of his limbs; he was shaking his head 'no' before the man even finished asking, “Can you stand?”

“My legs are asleep,” he explained. “So are my arms.” He tried to move this legs, get them straightened out for the first time in how knew how long. A telekinetic push helped, though he could tell from the complete lack of sensation that it was going to be awhile before he'd be able to put any weight on them. He suspected they didn't have awhile. People were racing through other parts of the building, their panic and anger palpable to him.

They were going to be here soon. Even if the vigilante's arrows would be enough against the guns, Stephen couldn't let him use them.

And if he didn't, they were both going to get shot.

Stephen's eye landed on the open door then and traveled down to the fallen gunman. The door was unguarded, and the others in the building were only starting to regroup. They had maybe a minute, which wasn't enough time for his limbs to recover, but was more than enough for other methods of egress. “Shoot one of the windows,” he ordered, tipping a chin in the direction of the dirtied glass on the wall across from them.

“Why?” the vigilante asked. Through the shadows cast on his face by the hood, his stubbled-jaw tensed.

“To throw them off,” Stephen replied. He took a deep breath and let it out as the first painful tingles of reawakening nerves began to prickle around his feet. He couldn't keep the grimace of pain off his face or out of his voice.

The vigilante hesitated for only a second before drawing an arrow from his quiver and loosing it at a window. On impact, the glass shattered and rained to the floor in large shards that hit the concrete and shattered further. Bright light flooded into the room, a stark contrast to the artificial twilight that had filled it before. “Now what?”

“Help me stand up,” Stephen replied. He was ages away from being able to succeed at that task, but that didn't matter for what he really wanted to do.

The vigilante listened for a long second to the commotion of people running up stairs, the slam and clang of doors, of feet on metal. “We have to move fast,” he said.

Stephen allowed a small smile to quirk his lips. “Faster than light,” he replied.

His still-dead arm was no sooner wrapped around the vigilante's shoulder, when he closed his eyes, found his center, and teleported.

Stephen was still new at this whole having-powers thing, which meant that there were a lot of specifics to the skills that he hadn't worked out yet: like how to choose a destination when teleporting outside of line-of-sight. This time that meant that they landed in his bedroom—correction, the guestroom in which he was staying—at the Queen mansion. Stephen promptly fell backward onto the bed, a grunt escaping his lips as his arms chose that moment to come back to life.

The vigilante stumbled as the surface changed beneath his feet, though he found his new footing quickly. He had an arrow nocked in his bow and pointed at Stephen before the flash from the teleport faded. “What did you do? Where are we?”

Stephen sighed. The bedding beneath him was soft and inviting, especially after the hard floor he'd been sitting on. The sudden urge to curl up and go to sleep swept through him, though having an arrow pointed at his chest did make it easier to resist. “I guess we have a lot of catching up to do.” A beat, and then he added the hook, “Oliver.”

The string on the bow tightened just a fraction more, and Stephen instinctively reached for his powers again, though the close distance between him and the weapon pointed at him made it unlikely that he'd have even the reaction time to use them. The best he could hope for was to knock the arrow aside so that the only thing it hit was the mattress.

“Take me back,” the vigilante ordered. “Right now!”

“I can't,” Stephen answered, low, resolute. It wasn't an issue of knowing the location. He knew that room better than he'd ever wanted to know a room. The issue was what would happen if he followed the direction. People would die, and it didn't matter if they deserved it, Stephen couldn't be responsible for it happening. Not didn't want to. _Couldn't._ Tomorrow People can't kill, he remembered Cara explaining, and now he was beginning to understand how much that could limit his otherwise immense powers.

“Do it!”

“I _can't_!” Stephen shouted, forcing himself up on wobbly elbows. Anything to make his cousin take his words more seriously.

The bow lowered then, the arrow rejoining its mates in the quiver. “Stay here!” Without another word, the vigilante crossed to the window and opened it. He pushed the storm screen out and had himself through the aperture in record time, leaving only the curtains to drift in the new breeze.

Stephen dropped back onto the bed, all energy suddenly sucked out of him. His heart thudded in his chest, his breathing came ragged and rapid. All he could do for a long time was stare at the ceiling, not even a clear thought in his head except the image of the sharp point of the arrow that had been aimed at him and the sharper focus in his cousin's mind about how easily he would have been able to use it.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time Oliver got back to the abandoned building—part of an industrial park that had filed for bankruptcy two years before—the evidence of the kidnapping was gone. He sensed the absolute emptiness before he got close enough to confirm it, yet proceeded slowly and cautiously across the cracked and weed-infested parking lot just in case.

The building was low and wide with a truck unloading zone dominating the far side. It had probably been intended to be a distribution center, which gave a lot of open warehouse space and a small selection of offices—a structure that had made it a lot easier to find his cousin. On the third floor sat the shattered window of the office in which Stephen had been held. 

Oliver pressed himself against the wall beneath that window and listened carefully. Wind whistled through the open window, carrying the distant calls of birds and traffic. He heard no talking, no footsteps. That absence raised his hackles more than any number of armed guards could have.

With his guard up and his bow at the ready, Oliver slid around the side of the building to the back entrance that he had broken into earlier. The handle was still broken, door still hanging open onto the dim, dusty interior. Once again, Oliver entered the building and began to move through the rooms, searching each in turn. There were signs that others had been present recently: scuff marks on the floor, smudges on doorknobs from hastily wiped away fingerprints, a stray potato chip bag that had blown into a corner, a dark smear in the third floor room from the guard he'd felled. He caught traces of a variety of colognes and scented soaps, the heavy odor of a smoked cigarette. The people who had made these marks were all gone.

Returning once again to the third floor room, Oliver inspected it for any clues that might have been overlooked. Besides the now-dried smear and the shattered window, the room had nothing to offer.

“What do you have for me, Felicity?” he asked, flicking on the transmitter for his earpiece that connected him to HQ.

“Oh my God, Oliver?” Felicity's voice came frantic and high-pitched over the connection. “Are you OK? Where are you? The tracker in your boot glitched and we thought--”

”I'm fine. Stephen's fine--” _For now_ , Oliver added to himself. “--And all the bad guys have cleared out. Something's wrong here.”

“I'm still running the traces on the ransom call. I keep hitting dead-ends.”

“Try researching Stephen.”

The line went silent for a second and then Oliver heard the clattering of keys, another pause, then a blown-out breath of frustration. “J-A-M-E-S-O-N?” Felicity asked, spelling the surname.

“Yes.”

“Found him.” She dropped into silence, no doubt reading the entry over. Arriving at a conclusion didn't take long. “He's just a typical kid. Well, not so typical. He looks like he's kind of a loner. Facebook profile. Only a couple dozen friends, all of them classmates. He's not tagged in any photos except his profile picture. Twitter. Only three followers and fewer than a half-dozen tweets. One mention on his school's website for participation in an AIDS fundraiser. If he's hiding anything, he's-- Oh.”

“Oh? Felicity? What's 'oh'?”

“He has some interesting notes on his permanent record. Lots of absences and truancy.”

Oliver thought back to his own time in high school and how little of it he managed to spend in class. Teenage Oliver had no difficulty devising better ways to spend his time and his money than sitting in an over-priced classroom. “That doesn't sound unusual. Everyone cuts classes here and there.”

“I didn't,” Felicity corrected.

“Let me guess: You got the perfect attendance award.”

”Well, no,” she amended with a huff of indignation. “Senior Skip Day, everyone cut except for me. I just knew that Stacy was never going to let me live it down. 'Flawless Felicity' she used to call me, like that's an insult. Anyway, I hacked the attendance to show that I skipped...and...um...We were talking about Stephen's attendance, not mine. His record notes that he had problems with inattentiveness, inappropriate outbursts, talking to himself, and...” Oliver could practically see her pushing her glasses back into place. “...hearing voices.”

“Drugs?”

The keys clacked again. “Only legal ones. Lots of them, too. It looks like he was a regular at the mental hospital. That's strange...”

“What?”

“Thorazine, Haldol, Amisulpride... They're all anti-psychotics. It's an impressive list, too and the doctors keep changing his prescription.” She dropped into the silence of someone who had been caught up in her reading and had forgotten that anyone was listening to her.

Oliver cleared his throat. “Felicity, what does that mean?”

“What? Oh! It probably means that the drugs weren't working.” 

Oliver mulled this over. What he'd heard didn't fit with what he'd seen of the Stephen who'd been living under his roof for the past week. The kid had been secretive and kind of a loner, but he didn't act any more abnormally than any other teen Oliver had known. Thea, for instance. Further, if he was taking medications as powerful as the ones Felicity had named, he was doing an excellent job concealing that fact. “Is there anything else?” 

“Else?” Felicity squawked. “I'd say we've just been handed our first real clue. Your cousin--” 

“Something's missing,” Oliver interrupted. “Keep digging.” With that, he cut off the connection to his headquarters. Crossing to where Stephen had been tied up, he crouched down. His eyes traced around the room, taking in the doorway and the play of dust particles in the sunlight from the broken window. Though it shouldn't have been, the electricity had been on in the building, lights in all the sockets and working, which indicated that people had intended to use the place for some time. The kidnapping had been in broad daylight, as had been the rescue. Oliver normally would have waited for darkness, but the ransom demand that Felicity intercepted hadn't given that option. Oliver had rushed to the rescue as fast as he could, certain that he was going to be too late. 

Yet, in the end, Stephen was the one who had taken both of them from the building. Somehow. What Stephen had done... Oliver frowned and shook his head, sensing anew that he was missing vital information. His cousin could have rescued himself at any time. So, why hadn't he? 

The sound of an approaching car engine interrupted Oliver's analysis. Glancing out the broken window—careful to conceal himself as he did—he spotted a police car rolling across the parking lot. His motorcycle was out there. Correction: motorcycles. He'd had to bring a second one to get here the second time, and now both were parked in the lot below. While he'd done his best to park them out of the way, the lot had been designed to be a wide open, well-lit space, which made hiding anything in it impossible. From the angle the police car was approaching, it was clear that the officer had seen the bikes. 

Oliver made his decision quickly. Slipping out of the room and down the hall, he pulled off his hood and gauntlets as he ran. He ducked into the nearest restroom, spotting in one glance the single, partially used roll of toilet paper resting on the back of the stool, the thin stack of brown paper towels on the back of the sink, and the smudges of liquid soap and toothpaste in the sink. For the first time, he took some satisfaction in being right about how long the building had been used. 

He pitched his hood and gloves into the corner and stripped off all the other incriminating pieces of Hood gear, adding them to the pile. Being daytime, he hadn't put the makeup on his eyes, for which he was now grateful. A quick splash of water on his face and a yank on his shirt to smooth out any creases from being under his uniform, and the Hood was exchanged for Oliver Queen, businessman. 

Oliver strode downstairs and out into the desolate parking lot, where the police car was now parked next to his bikes. The dark-haired officer had gotten out and was squatted behind one of the bikes, writing down the plates. He stood up when Oliver appeared, a scowl plastered across his face. 

Oliver blanched as he got a clear look at the officer's face. “Detective.” 

“Now why am I not surprised to find you some place you're not supposed to be?” Detective Lance answered. 

Oliver glanced around the desolated parking lot then down at his watch. “What brings you out here?” 

“Someone reported suspicious activity out here. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?” Lance challenged. His tone made it clear that he thought he'd caught Oliver. 

With a roll of his head toward the building behind him, Oliver answered, “I haven't seen anything suspicious. I've been here for the last hour inspecting this building for possible acquisition.” 

“Uh-huh,” Lance responded, tucking his thumbs into his belt-loops. 

Oliver quirked an eyebrow. “There's some minor damage from neglect.” He indicated the broken window with a wave of his hand. “A few hints of vandalism and some evidence of squatters. Nothing that can't be cleaned up and fixed. It seems to me that the city would benefit from getting the building put to use rather than letting it continue to rot.” 

“Uh-huh,” Lance repeated. “So you're only here because you're interested in bringing some jobs to Starling City?” 

“What other reason would there be?” Oliver questioned. The obvious answer—that a vigilante would use an abandoned building as his base—sat like the proverbial elephant between them. “The real question is: why are you here? Isn't investigating potential vandals a little below your pay-grade?” 

Lance met Oliver's question with a stony stare. “I volunteered. Figured I'd run into you here.” 

”Like I said, Detective, I'm here on business.” For once the truth worked better than a lie. 

“All by yourself?” Lance asked with a tip of his chin toward the pair of bikes. 

Oliver swallowed, his mind skittering through possible scenarios for how to explain why two motorcycles, both registered in his name, could be in the same parking lot. 

“Oliver? You ready to go?” a new voice called. 

Oliver and Quentin swiveled at the same time to see Stephen coming out the busted door. His brown hair was mussed and he walked with a slight limp, but otherwise seemed no worse for wear. 

Turning back to the detective, Oliver allowed a smile to pass over his lips. “This is my cousin, Stephen,” he introduced, as Stephen joined them. “Stephen, Detective Lance.” 

Stephen held out a hand in greeting. Lance eyed it, but didn't accept. After an awkward moment, Stephen let his hand drop again, rubbing it against the leg of his jeans. 

“Queen's cousin?” he asked suspiciously. 

“On our mothers' side,” Stephen explained. To Oliver he added, “You said this was going to be a quick stop. Could we wrap this up? No offense, but looking at buildings is boring.” 

With a slow shake of his head, Lance said, “I don't know how you always slip through the loop, Queen.” 

“I have nothing to hide,” Oliver responded, an open shrug punctuating his words. 

“Then you won't mind if I take a quick look around your possible acquisition.” It wasn't a question. “I wouldn't want there to be any surprises.” 

Oliver swept a hand out, inviting Lance to help himself. The detective stalled a second, a glance back and forth between the two men like he was waiting for them to spring the other half of the trap, then set off toward the open door. 

“I'm going to wait here,” Stephen called, loud enough for Lance to hear, and sounding every bit of the annoyed eighteen year old he was. Then, quieter and only for Oliver's ears, he added, “Once he's inside, I'll take care of it.” 

“Take care of what?” 

“You know,” Stephen answered. “Go. Don't let him out of your sight.” 

Oliver pressed his lips together and growled through his nose. So much of his life now was a tenuous juggling between one barely-trustworthy alliance and another, each time his allegiance a gamble about which side was least likely to betray him first. Here he was again, pitting the trust he didn't have in his cousin against the need to conceal his secret from the detective. 

In the background, he heard the door clang against the wall. Stephen made a shooing motion, his blue eyes widening in a silent urging for Oliver to get moving. For an instant, the expression reminded Oliver of one he had seen on his own face, and the dice rolled. With sure steps, he moved to catch up with the detective, trusting that his cousin would hold up his end of their temporary partnership. 

The escorted trip through the building ratcheted Oliver's nerves up to high. Adrenaline coursed through his body, his limbs quivered with the need to strike, to block, to _move_. He clenched his fists behind his back, fingernails digging into his palms, and fought to keep his surface demeanor as calm and collected as it would be if he really didn't have anything to worry about. 

Lance approached each doorway, each new space, as if _this one_ would be the one that would give away the whole game, and each time he walked away with his head hanging a little lower. He kept up a running commentary as he went, assessing the number and size of the offices, speculating on the amount of warehouse space and what could be stored in it. “How much do you think it'll cost to finish this place?” he asked, his eyes sweeping over the interior of one, cataloging the stain of water damage in one corner and a different, darker stain on the floor. 

Oliver shrugged. He didn't have to pretend to sound bored. “That's my accountants' concern.” 

Lance didn't like that answer. He brushed past Oliver on his way through the stairwell door, grumbling, “Must be nice not to have to worry about money.” 

Outside the third floor bathroom, Lance paused again, a glint coming to his eyes as if he knew that he'd found the missing clue. 

Oliver's heart thudded hard in his chest. To hide any discomfort, he glanced again at his watch. “Stephen's going to think we got lost,” he commented. 

“I'm sure he's fine,” Lance responded. “We'll be done here in a minute.” _You'll be done here in a minute_ , Oliver heard. Lance pushed open the bathroom door and stuck his head in. 

Over his shoulder, Oliver saw again the roll of toilet paper, the stack of paper towels, the stained sink. That was it. Every last piece of his gear was gone. For a second he worried that he'd misremembered which bathroom he'd left it all in. But, no, this was definitely the right one, and he understood that he now owed his cousin one more. 

“Squatters?” Lance asked. 

“Like I said before,” Oliver answered honestly. “There's traces, but I haven't seen anyone. Whoever was here must have moved on. Probably the same person who broke the door.” 

Lance hummed speculatively, but for once didn't press the question. He dropped into silence for the rest of the tour, his step picking up weight. By the time he gave up and got back in his police car, his shoulders had acquired a noticeable slump and Oliver was fighting the urge to see him off with a smug “I told you so.” 

He watched the detective pull away, then went back one last time to jam the door shut as best as he could. Now that he'd made the alibi about buying the building, it seemed in his best interest to at least go through the motions of following through—he suspected that Detective Lance would be paying particular attention to those records—and he didn't need actual squatters moving in and creating more damage before he did. 

“I took the gear back to the house,” Stephen said, coming up behind him. “Hope that's OK. I didn't know--” 

Oliver spun around and pushed his cousin into the wall, pressing his forearm tight against the younger boy's chest. The four inches height he had on him became critical leverage. “I thought you said you couldn't come back here.” 

The attack had knocked Stephen's wind out of him, and the hold prevented him from drawing in enough breath to fight back. “I couldn't,” he gasped. His face was rapidly reddening from his efforts to breathe and he pulled ineffectively at Oliver's arm. His own athletic build wasn't enough against the much better trained, physically bigger, and angrier man smashing him into the wall. 

“That's a lie,” Oliver responded, his voice cold. 

Stephen shook his head. “No. Came...back...” He stopped, the hard fought words too much effort to continue. His lids dropped closed, face relaxed. He stopped struggling. 

Then he was gone. 

Oliver slammed into the wall, his balance upset as what he was leaning against disappeared. Though momentarily dazed from hitting the wall, he spun around and landed in a fighter's crouch, balanced on the balls of his feet. 

A dozen feet away stood Stephen, bent over at the waist and hacking for air. “Came back as soon as I could,” he coughed out. 

Too furious to care what kind of excuse Stephen had prepared, Oliver lunged at him. 

“Stop!” Stephen croaked. He threw a hand up and Oliver went flying back against the wall again. The corrugated metal siding crumpled under the impact. 

Oliver tried to right himself and found that he couldn't. A force he couldn't see prevented him from moving forward, from moving at all. He struggled against it with no success. 

Slowly, Stephen collected himself. He stood up straight, breath recovered, a strength of resolution in his expression that Oliver had never seen before. 

“If you'll stop trying to kill me for two seconds, I'll explain.” 

Oliver pushed against the force and found that it had no give, no weakness that he could exploit. He couldn't even tell what it was that was holding him, where it was coming from, how big it was. It had to be something that Stephen was doing, but Stephen was still well out of reach. Still, strain tightened Stephen's jawline and his extended hand shook like it was what held Oliver captive. Recognizing the weakness of this position, Oliver gave a slight nod of acquiescence. 

Stephen lowered his hand and the invisible force ceased; Oliver dropped a few centimeters that he hadn't been aware he'd had under him, landing hard on the dirt. Stephen opened his mouth and closed it again, pulling a face as he tried to come up with what to say. Finally, he settled on, “I have powers.” He rolled his eyes, tried and failed again for words, and then added, “It's a genetic thing.” 

Entwined disbelief and panic surged through Oliver. Powers, like the ability to travel anywhere and to throw people around without touching them, were impossible. Except that Oliver had already seen enough to know that they weren't—which made Stephen dangerous in ways that Oliver could only begin to imagine. And if they were genetic... 

Stephen recoiled like he'd been punched and pressed his palm to his temple. “Don't worry. I got them from my dad.” 

It turned out that wasn't a relief. It did, however, make a strange kind of sense. Oliver only vaguely remembered his uncle; the man had abandoned his family when his boys were still young. What he recalled was a jittery, paranoid person who always seemed to know more than he should, which made him barely tolerable company in the best of times. And made his departure a relief. 

“You have powers?” Oliver echoed. “What kind of powers?” 

“Like _Jumper_.” At Oliver's blank expression, he clarified, “You know, the movie?” He rolled his head as the reference went over his cousin's head. “You don't know the movie. It's about a kid who can teleport--” 

Though he had spent more of his youth partying than in keeping up with the latest trends in science fiction, Oliver recognized that word. “Like _Star Trek_ ,” he supplied. “'Beam me up, Scottie.'” He also knew that teleporting was impossible. Or, it _should_ be impossible. As in, scientifically outside the realm of human achievement. Something to do with the dispersion of atoms and what it meant for a person to be alive.... 

Stephen nodded, and Oliver found himself surprised that someone his cousin's age would get the reference to such an old show. That moment was extinguished as _why_ they were making these comparisons caught up with him. “Sort of,” Stephen replied. “Except that was technology. Mine's part of what I am. I have. . . superpowers.” He cut himself off, as if realizing that he was saying too much. “But I'm not a freaking superhero! You seem to have that role filled already.” 

His voice controlled, dangerous, any levity destroyed, Oliver asked, “How did you find out?” 

Stephen cringed, his hand coming up like he knew that what he was going to say wasn't going to go over well. “I read your mind.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While htbthomas is always an excellent beta, she really earned the high praise with this chapter. She took a look at, what I thought was, the finished version and told me to rewrite it, then rewrite it again. Any remaining mistakes are mine. I am a story-tinkerer, so if you spot anything wrong, please point it out so I can fix it. Thanks :)

Though Stephen had been expecting to get attacked again, Oliver's response was the opposite: He shut down. At the confession, Oliver went completely still, his hands clenched at his sides, his mind utterly impenetrable. He stood for so long as if Stephen had frozen him in time that Stephen began to grow concerned that he had. It wouldn't be the first time he'd used his powers by accident.

Then Oliver broke free.

Without so much as a comment or a flicker of expression, Oliver stalked over to his waiting bike and peeled it out of the parking lot like he couldn't escape fast enough.

Stephen was left standing in shock, his arm still raised in a defensive position he didn't need, for a long, uncomfortable moment. A breeze tugged at the hood of his jacket and pushed a scattering of loose gravel across the parking lot, both of which he only dimly noticed as the rest of his brain worked on catching up with what had happened.

Oliver had left without him.

In his next thought, it occurred to Stephen that Oliver had left because otherwise his cousin would have killed him.

Stephen swallowed hard.

Though he'd never given more than idle consideration to whether or not he could kill someone, Stephen had always assumed that if his life were on the line, he'd be able to defend it at any cost. Since coming into his powers, he'd discovered just how wrong that assumption was. He could still contemplate killing, in the abstract way that most people tossed the word or concept around. He could still provoke, still fight, still defend. But he could not take that last step. The one time he'd been pushed close enough to try, the pain crushed him. It had ripped through his mind and body like no agony he could ever imagine. He'd nearly killed himself in the act of lashing out at another.

Oliver had no such barrier. So, he'd left. It was the only thing he could have done. But he'd left Stephen behind, in a strange city and with few resources. Fortunately, Stephen wasn't helpless.

From his vantage point in the parking lot, he could see the smudge of buildings that marked the Starling City skyline off in the distance. The sun was only beginning to paint the horizon pink, and was still hours away from fully setting. For all that he'd been through, Stephen felt like it should be late at night, or possibly well into the next week. His head suddenly felt stuffed thick with exhaustion and all he wanted was to get someplace he could go to sleep for a day or so. 

Closing his eyes, he focused his mental energy, visualized his bedroom back at the Queen mansion, and teleported. There was always an instant—just an instant—right after he flipped the mental switch where he questioned whether it was going to work. Then the inrush of air tingled his skin and tightened his eardrums like on a descending plane and he _felt_ the world shift.

He stumbled forward on arrival, his feet finding a hard surface not unlike the one he'd just left. The wind blew harder here, and colder. Overhead a jet screamed by.

His eyes snapped open at the wrongness. While the Queen mansion could only be qualified as huge, Stephen was certain that jets could not fly inside.

Good thing he wasn't afraid of heights. He'd appeared on the roof of a building. As he approached the wall that encircled the open rooftop and peered over its edge, he amended his assessment: He'd appeared on the roof of a very, very tall building. Behind him hunkered the shed-like structure that held the doorway down to the main building, rust-smattered vents and fans, and an improbable wooden bench that rested on even rustier metal supports. In front of him lay only the sharp descent to the street. At this height, he wouldn't be dead before he hit the ground, but he'd have enough time to wish that he was. 

This was not where he had meant to teleport. This was not any place he would have meant to teleport to. A survey of the surrounding buildings, and another stomach-churning glance down to street level, confirmed that he had no idea where he was, though it definitely was not New York City, his home town. He couldn't even guess with any certainty what city he was in.

“God damn it!” he screamed, a well of pent-up frustration bursting inside him. He brought a foot down hard, kicking at the gravel scattered across the rooftop. Small pieces went flying, the thin noise of their landing swallowed in the thrum of the fans. The violence wasn't satisfying, wasn't enough to calm the anger at his failure to get himself someplace where he could relax, think. With more invectives spat into the sky, he kicked again and again at the gravel. Spinning around, he found a patch of weeds nosing up from a crack in roof's surface. He kicked at it once, then harder. Bits of green leaf tore off and smeared against the white rubber of his shoes. 

This tiny act of destruction worked where all the gravel rearranging hadn't. Stephen came to a stop at last, panting from exertion, his eyes burning with repressed tears. Raking his fingers through his hair, he tipped his head back toward the bright blue sky and offered one more desultory swear at the day that had done nothing but go wrong. Never was he so certain that he should have stayed in bed that morning. Never had he been so eager before to get back to bed to try to forget a day. 

Again summoning his power, he visualized the bedroom more carefully: the four poster bed with its dark wood, the thick carpet, the framed picture that dominated one wall of the mansion in an earlier era. The energy that churned through him this time was different, fizzing across his skin like carbonation rather than rushing over it. It felt unstable, harder to contain or control. Before he could reconsider, the mental switch flipped, folding and unfolding the space around him.

As his eyes settled on the shattered glass window in front of him, he sunk to the floor with the longest sigh of his life. He'd returned to the room where he'd been held captive. With this defeat, even the energy to swear vanished. Once again the hard cement seeped its cold through his clothes and into his flesh; the damp and mildew crawled into his nose and tickled the back of his throat.

Why was this going so wrong? He'd never heard of teleporting failing like this. Visualize and go, that's the way it worked.

“John?” he asked, his voice small in the empty room.

Nothing.

He cleared his throat—cleared his mind—and tried again. “John?”

 _Each of our powers have its limits_ , he remembered Cara explaining. _Just like physical powers. But they can be stretched._

And what happens when they're stretched too far, he wondered now. While teleporting a couple of times wasn't unusual, he'd also been using his telepathy and telekinesis—and all that was not counting the toll the day had taken on his body and psyche. He was pretty familiar with his physical limits; he worked out and liked to run to burn off excess energy, despite having never joined a sports team. His mental limits were a different question. The other TPs had kept telling him that his powers were stronger than theirs, that he was capable of so much more than them. Even so, no one believed that his powers were infinite. Had he finally pushed himself too far?

Some time later, before the tingling and numbness of sitting for too long in one position had the chance to take over, he pushed to his feet and stumbled back out of the building. There were no guards to stop him this time, no guns, no one to care. The trip down the hall and toward the exit felt both immensely long and unbelievably short, and he kept having to pause to review how many stairs he'd touched in fear that that he'd miss a vital one and end up going down the rest head first.

The sunlight caressed his skin and Stephen felt the tension in his shoulders ebb. He still had to squint, his eyes having fully adjusted to the darkened interior while he tried to pull himself together. The light was bright, but it didn't hurt. Instead it seemed to offer hope that he kind of desperately needed. He'd made it this far; all he had to do was get himself back to the mansion and he'd be fine.

Between faded yellow lines sat the motorcycle, beckoning to him. Oliver had left the key in the ignition—and why shouldn't he have? It wasn't like there was anyone here to steal the bike. Would Oliver even have worried about the bike being stolen? Or would he assume that he could just buy a new one? 

With a shake of his head, Stephen brought himself back on task and moved to examine the vehicle. Though he'd never driven a motorcycle, he'd been on one a few times. His dad had had one, back when his dad still lived with them, when Stephen could still pretend they were a normal family. 

In his mind he heard the memory of his dad's voice as he guided the young Stephen through the steps of getting the motorcycle started and moving. “Remember...” he heard, the tone so patient and encouraging. “Don't forget....” In a lapse of attentiveness, Stephen tried to reach back to that memory with his telepathy, mistaking the clearness of its presence for true mental contact. Then he remembered that his father was missing and out of contact, his own powers were on the fritz, and knowing the process of doing something was different than _doing_ it.

On a practice lap around the parking lot, the front wheels of bike reared up in a sudden wheelie. Balance destabilized, Stephen and the bike toppled over. He hit the ground hard. Fortunately, he hadn't been going very fast and he had taken the time to put on the helmet. The only damage would be more bruises for his already abused body, and a painful reminder that he was never going to qualify for his driver's license if he didn't get more practice at any kind of driving.

He was still laying on the ground, the cracked asphalt digging into his exposed skin, when he heard the distinctive pop of dislocated air. Craning his head, he spotted Russell striding toward him, his face passing through a rapid series of amused expressions as he processed Stephen's predicament. 

“So this is why you haven't checked in,” Russell chided, barely constrained laughter in his voice. In his jean shorts, Yankee's t-shirt that set off his bronzed skin tone, a Yankee's baseball cap that covered his short, black hair, and a giant souvenir cup of soda in his hand, he looked like he'd used the seventh inning stretch to jaunt across the country just to check on Stephen. Dropping into a crouch next to the bike, he took a long slurp of his drink through the straw. “Do you want some help? Or were you planning to lay there all day?”

“What do you think?” Stephen snipped.

After another slurp and a shake of the cup that rattled the ice against the plastic sides, Russell answered, “I think that you told John you had things under control. Unless this sweet bike is named 'Control,' I also think you weren't telling the truth.” He tsked, shaking his head in a mockery of disapproval. “How's John supposed to charge to the rescue if he doesn't know what's going on? Good thing for you I decided to take the initiative.” His gaze drifted appreciatively over the bike with the air of an experienced appraiser. “Where did you get this from, anyway? Do you think I could take it for a spin?” Setting the drink down, he helped lift the bike up so that Stephen could slide out from underneath. When he was done he checked it over for damage—tsked again when he found a couple dings—then straddled the machine and leaned forward like he was already racing down the road.

Stephen could only roll his eyes at how Russell was more concerned about the bike than about him. “It's my cousin's,” he explained, “And, no, he definitely would not be cool with you borrowing the bike.” _Especially considering your track record for returning things you've 'borrowed.'_

“I heard that,” Russell commented, his tone almost proud.

“Good. Then you know I meant it. Now—” He stopped, the phrase “get off the bike” just shy of his lips when a new idea occurred to him. Russell was here, Russell could get back to New York and the other TP in the blink of eye, and Russell had access to everything. “Do you have a phone?” He didn't waste the breath on asking Russell to teleport him back to the mansion since he already knew that he couldn't do it without having a mental touchpoint to focus on. Since he'd neither been to the mansion before nor knew anyone there, he had no touchpoint.

Russell squinted at him like he'd never heard such a strange question. The brim of the baseball cap cut a shadow across his upper face. “Why?”

Taking a moment to brush dirt from jeans that were now too dirty to make the gesture worthwhile, Stephen formulated the shortest version of the story that he could: “I need to get this--” He gestured to the bike. “--to my cousin's house back there--” and over his shoulder toward the Starling City skyline, “--and I need a GPS because I don't actually know where I am.”

Russell nodded knowingly. “And you'd rather ride than teleport. I get that, Dude. Nothing wrong with doing things the old fashioned way. Are you sure you don't want me to drive, since, you know, I know how to keep upright?”

“That's funny,” Stephen answered flatly. “Also, no. I'm pretty sure my cousin would kill you if he caught you touching his bike.”

“Any worse than he'd kill you for scratching it up?”

Stephen flinched; he hadn't thought of that, and Oliver was already pissed at him without knowing about the damage to his bike. “I'll take my chances. Now, about that phone?”

With an melodramatic show of reluctance, Russell dismounted the motorcycle. “What's wrong with yours?”

“I lost it.” Stephen sighed. What he meant was, the captors had taken it away from him. Since Oliver hadn't mentioned finding it, Stephen could only assume that he was never going to see the phone again. His mother was going to be pissed. She already had a low opinion of him from his months of erratic behavior, before he met the people who belonged to the voices in his head. “It's been a _looooong_ day.”

“You know that most of us don't carry cell phones,” Russell pointed out. “It's not like we need them. Plus, they're not safe.”

Stephen felt a start of surprise at discovering that Russell shared a viewpoint with John. John lived in an abandoned subway station under New York City and had excellent reasons for staying as far away from the grid as possible. Many of the other TP emulated him, or at least acceded to avoiding GPS technology, out of fear of all the people—like those who had kidnapped Stephen—who wanted to find the TP. That Russell was one of them spoke to a survival instinct that Russell's surface behavior belied.

“But you can get one, right?” Stephen answered. “I only need it for a few minutes. That should be enough time to get my bearings.”

Russell tipped the brim of his hat up and stared off into the distance for a long moment. Whatever thoughts were passing through his mind barely made a crease on his face and remained out of Stephen's mental grasp. At last he nodded. “I'll ask around.” Picking up his cup, he once more swept an appraising eye over the motorcycle. “But it's going to cost you.”

“If I get back safely, I promise I'll talk to him,” Stephen agreed, understanding that the price of Russell's help was a chance at the kind of technology that people who lived in subway tunnels rarely had access to. “But if he says 'no,' then you gotta accept that. Oliver's not the kind of guy who can be pushed.” As Stephen had too well learned, though he was careful to leave any specifics out of his thoughts.

“Good enough,” Russell agreed. He glanced at the expensive, no doubt pilfered, watch on his wrist. “You, uh, probably don't want to wait, though. The game's not going to be over for awhile and I didn't pay good money for that ticket.” Flashing a smirk, he vanished. Splatters of condensation from the cup onto the ground were all that marked his leaving.

Stephen blinked at the place where Russell had been standing. The sun was hot on his head, the smell of metal and hot asphalt acrid in his nose. Russell would be good to his word, but his warning was appreciated.

Another wave of exhaustion swept over him, blurring his vision. Rubbing his eyes cleared it, but keeping his eyes focused was taking a lot more concentration than advisable. Even if he didn't know how to find the mansion, he was certain that following the road into Starling City would at least bring him to a coffee shop. Maybe by then, Russell would come through.

Crossing his fingers that he wouldn't crash the bike again, he guided it out of the industrial park and turned onto the main road. He pointed the bike in the direction of the cluster of office buildings and high rises that marked the skyline and gave the engine an extra rev to boost his confidence.

Light traffic spotted the road which encouraged Stephen to stick to the right lane and a lower-than-posted speed limit. On the one side of the road sprawled the abandoned buildings of the industrial park and on the other thick trees and wild underbrush of a forest preserve. The scent of chlorophyl filled the air and, for a few moments, helped him forget why he was on a motorcycle in the middle of nowhere.

Red and blue lights behind him slammed him back into reality. A glance in the rearview mirror showed a police car tailing him with the lights on. The siren gave a single whoop, and Stephen eased the bike onto the shoulder, fully expecting the police car to keep driving. It didn't. 

The bike stuttered against the roadway grooves that marked the boundary between lane and shoulder, clattering his teeth. Stray detritus bounced up from under the wheels and pinged off his jeans.

To his surprise, the police car pulled up right behind him, the lights staying on. Stephen shut off the bike, planted his feet on the ground, and did his damnedest not to panic. Every fiber of his body told him to gun the engine and try to escape, to run into the woods and hide, to teleport away and take his chances on where he ended up. Though he had no reason to fear the police, he had developed an amazing fear of being stranded in isolated places with people he didn't know. 

Stephen bowed his head, mentally preparing for the worst—whatever that may be. At the crunch of the officer's footsteps, he straightened up and turned, a polite, “Is there a problem, Officer?” on his lips. The question died when he recognized the detective he'd met in the parking lot. The man's peppered brown hair rustled in the breeze and he walked with the confident gait of a person who knew that everything was going his way.

“Stephen, isn't it?” the detective asked. “Would you mind showing me your license and registration?”

Under his visor, Stephen closed his eyes and fought down a wave of hysteria. A truck rumbled past; the driver acknowledged Stephen's predicament with a toot of his horn.

“The motorcycle belongs to Oliver,” Stephen explained, doing his best to keep his voice steady against the pit of wrongness growing in his chest. To buy himself a few seconds—not that they would help—he slowly pulled the visor off and hung it from one of the handlebars, then began patting down his pockets. “I... think I left my wallet at home,” he lied, as if he was just now discovering its absence. His captors had taken it, of course, along with his phone.

“Now that's unfortunate,” the detective drawled. His eyes swept Stephen up and down, assessing, calculating. It unnerved Stephen how much confidence the detective had in his perception. “Because I think that you don't have a valid driver's license.”

Stephen winced in guilt, and it was only after he saw the look of satisfaction settle over the detective's face that he realized the accusation was fishing. “Oliver was just teaching me...”

The detective nodded, a suspicion once more confirmed. “Where is Oliver, by the way?” He didn't take his eyes off Stephen, which was even more disconcerting than the way he talked like he knew all the answers already. “I saw him drive past here like a bat out of hell some time ago. I would have stopped him, but then I remembered that you were still back there,” the detective added with a wave of his hand in the direction that Stephen had come from. 

Stephen's stomach sank; this pull over had been _planned_. No way was Stephen going to be able to talk his way out of this one. Instead, he started to laugh.

“Is something funny?” the detective asked.

Though Stephen shook his head 'no,' he couldn't stop laughing. All the frustration and anger and tamped down fear from the day welled up at once and tore out of his mouth in harsh, ragged laughs that sounded an awful lot like sobs. It wasn't long before his stomach and sides were cramping and he found himself bowed over the handlebars of the bike with tears rolling down his cheeks.

The detective had more to say, but Stephen had passed beyond the ability to listen. In a vague way, he was aware that he was sitting at the side of the road, out in the open where anyone could see him, and laughing like a person who had smoked way too much weed. He had no idea how he was going to explain this to his mother, much less if she would even give him the chance. With all of the trouble he'd already caused for her, he knew that she didn't have any patience or goodwill saved for him if he crossed the line into being a criminal.

The next thing he was fully aware of was being escorted into the backseat of the patrol car, a hand on his head both pushing him down and guiding him through the low opening. The backseat was dark and small, without enough room for his legs, so Stephen was forced to sit at an angle. The air was close and smelled of hot plastic, alcohol, and vomit. He tried to hold his breath, but all that did was convert the gasps of laughter into hiccups.

The car door slammed shut. Stephen jumped, a violent hiccup ripping through him at the same time. If his face weren't already red with heat, he would have blushed.

“...to the station,” the detective stated as he slid into the driver's seat. “You and I can have ourselves a little chat while we're waiting for your parents to show up.” He picked up the radio. “Now we're just call to get the bike impounded until a _licensed_ driver can come claim it.” He made the call, sounding only too happy to do so, and put the car in gear.

In the backseat, Stephen bowed his head and sunk in on himself smaller in the vain hope that the detective would forget his was there. He'd never been in a police car before, and it turned out that being treated like a criminal was just as humiliating as he had expected. The fact that he hadn't really done anything wrong only made it worse. At the most, he should have gotten a warning and a slap on the wrist. 

The detective was clearly using him to get to Oliver. Stephen didn't need to read the man's mind now to see his agenda. In the few minutes of interaction he'd witnessed between the detective and his cousin, the one thing that had been made abundantly clear was that Oliver was determined to keep his secret identity from the detective and that Detective Lance knew that Oliver was hiding something important.

Which made is all the odder when the detective settled back in the driver's seat, like he was chauffeuring Stephen on a meandering Sunday drive, and commented, “Did you know that Oliver and my daughter used to date?” 

“No?” Stephen answered, his brow creasing as he tried to work out why this bit of information was being shared. It had sounded like an accusation, but an accusation about what he couldn't figure out. 

“They grew up together. I've known Oliver his whole life.”

“OK?” Stephen asked, still waiting, still getting the sense that he was supposed to apologize or explain, or something.

“I don't know you. Moira Queen has never mentioned a sister. Looking at you, it's obvious that you and Queen are related, so I figure you're not lying about that. Then again, you being a Queen relative just makes me wonder more: What's your story?” The detective peered at him via the rear view mirror and Stephen sunk lower in his seat so that he wouldn't be able to see the man watching him.

A loud hiccup saved him from giving anything away with his expression. “We're the poor relatives, and we're just visiting. I don't have a story worth listening to,” he answered, the lie rolling surprisingly easily off his tongue. The car rattled as it passed over a series of potholes on the chewed up road. The detective continued to stare at Stephen—somehow able to drive without looking at the road—and Stephen felt like he'd given an answer that was inadequate or wrong. He squirmed, hiccupped again. “My mom had some time off work and she thought we should reconnect with our family.”

“Reconnect? Why?”

Stephen shrugged. “I don't know. All the cool stories are kept from us kids, you know. She wanted to visit, so here I am.”

“And Oliver was just giving you a tour of his favorite abandoned places to hang out?” the detective pressed.

Stephen shrugged again. He didn't recognize this part of town at all, couldn't place any of the street names as ones he'd ever heard of. On the other hand, the police car drove past no fewer than three coffee shops in two blocks.

“Oliver's changed a lot,” the detective commented, again sounding like he was making an accusation.

 _No shit_ , Stephen wanted to say. He bit his tongue and kept it to himself. He was in enough trouble as it was. “I guess,” he said, instead. 

“You're not from Starling City, are you?” the detective asked, switching conversational directions so fast that Stephen felt mental whiplash.

Before Stephen could answer, the radio screeched with an incoming call. Between the police language and the hiccups that still convulsed his body and blocked his hearing, the alert from dispatch sounded like gibberish to him. 

What he did hear clearly was a single phrase in the detective's thoughts: “A body.”

His head snapped up, both at the recognition of how strong that thought must have been for his exhausted telepathy to pick it up and at the phrase itself. The next words from dispatch also came through clearly like Stephen was meant to hear them: Male, Caucasian, about 16 years old, hands and feet bound.

The description could have been _him_ , Stephen realized. If not for Oliver, it might have been him. He rubbed at the chafe marks on his wrists from where the ties had cut into his skin as a chill crawled over him. 

“Well, kiddo--” The detective glanced over his shoulder at Stephen, for the first time looking at him with sympathy. “--it looks like we've got a change of plans. Sit tight.” With that, he flipped on the lights and the siren and pushed his foot to the floor.

Only later did Stephen pinpoint that moment to when his hiccups stopped.


	4. Chapter 4

Oliver slammed the basement door of his headquarters shut behind him. 

The ride back to Verdant, his club, had given Oliver time to think, time to let a little of his anger toward his cousin's revelation burn itself down. In part, this was because the farther away Oliver got from the twerp, the easier to was to convince himself that Stephen had, in no way, done what he claimed. Read minds? Powers like that were hard enough to swallow without what Oliver had seen, though he'd seen enough to only be skeptical toward the “how” rather than the “if.” The idea that Stephen had read _Oliver's_ mind was a step too far, though. Like everything else about himself post-Island, everything Oliver did and thought and felt was tightly controlled because he couldn't afford for it to be otherwise. There was no way that someone could have been poking around in his head without his knowing it.

His anger diminishing, however, did not mean that it had burned itself out.

Felicity was scowling at the spread of monitors that were her workstation. Her blonde ponytail hung askew, like she'd been tugging on it, and her shoulders were as tight with tension as his own. Without even acknowledging her, Oliver headed to his punching bag and unleashed all his frustration in an upper-cut that resonated through the basement with a solid thunk. The bag rocked back, its support trembling. Barely had the bag swung back when he pummeled again it with a series of powerful jabs and crosses. The sting the impact brought to his bare knuckles grounded him in a way that little else could. Back-hand, elbow strike, cross, cross, jab.

What was he missing? Stephen had been snatched off the street while out jogging. A couple hours later, the kidnappers had called the Queen household with a ransom demand. That part was straightforward enough. Even 'why Stephen' seemed obvious, until Oliver considered what he'd learned about his cousin. A bead of sweat dripped into his eye. With a flick of his head, he dismissed it, not once slowing or halting in his assault on the punching bag. Left hook, right hook, cross. His breath was coming faster, though not from exertion. Why had Stephen been taken?

And why had he pretended to need saving?

Oliver's well-earned paranoia told him that the whole thing had been a setup to get to _him_. Except that didn't make sense, either, because then why would Stephen have stepped in to protect him from Lance? Why would Stephen have shared what he could do at all?

His next swing was blocked, his fist hitting a surface more pliable and warmer than a punching bag. Oliver looked in confusion at the dark mass that appeared to be absorbing his hand before realizing that it belonged to the much larger mass that was his friend, confidant, and bodyguard. John Diggle cranked Oliver's arm around in a swift move that would have pinned a smaller or less-trained man. Oliver twisted out of Diggle's control and took a step back, his fists coming up in a challenge that had nothing to do with loosing frustration.

The expression written on Diggle's face stilled Oliver. The lines that marred his normally smooth forehead and the resolve burned into his brown eyes were those of a person with bad news. “I'm sorry, Oliver.” He lifted his palms in a gesture that could have been meant to block an attack, or to stall one. “We just found out.” Swallowing hard, he continued, voice lower, “I'm sure you did everything you could.”

Oliver looked askance at his friend. “I did,” he agreed, brows furrowing. The damp basement air felt thick with tension. “The situation got--.”

“Oliver,” Felicity interrupted. She swiveled on her desk chair to face him. Even from this distance, he could see that her eyes were red with repressed tears. “We thought...You said...Oh, god....” She trailed off, her hands coming up to cover her mouth, and her gaze dropped to the cement floor.

Looking back to Diggle, Oliver lowered his fists and forced his fingers to unclench. “What's going on? What happened?” The way his friends were acting was too familiar, the wounds through his soul from past losses still so raw that he'd never be able to mistake his friends' hesitance for anything else: Something had happened to someone he loved and they didn't know how to tell him. His thoughts flashed through the short list of possibilities. Laurel? Thea?

His mother?

He took a step closer to Felicity. As imposing as he could be, as threatening, she wasn't fazed. Her shoulders twitched through her pink sweater and he could see the gouge marks in her palms from where her fingernails had dug in, but her reaction wasn't to him.

She murmured something—half apology, half sympathy—that he didn't hear. Behind her, the monitors glowed with the displays from the sources she'd been perusing when he came in. Over her shoulder he could see a blog headline in large letters: “Dead Teen.” The rest was cut off, hidden at the angle he was standing.

“We'll find out who did it and make them pay,” Diggle stated, his tone flat. The words filtered into Oliver's consciousness as if disconnected from any context or meaning, and it took him a moment to connect them to what he was seeing. “Whatever you can tell us...”

As he moved closer, more of the blog's story came into view. Though he couldn't yet to read the text, the picture beneath the headline showed a shot of the Starling City marina. It was a stock shot, one not related to the headline except to supply establishing information. Even so, the remembered scent of rotting fish and diesel fuel filled his nose.

Despite the efforts of the marina's owners and the Starling City tourism department, the marina had a dark streak to its reputation: drugs, extortion, and trafficking of all varieties occurred under the decks of the boats that used the docks there.

Corpses, too, had been known to surface. The occasional murder. Suicides. Sometimes, accidental deaths from people making bad decisions around water—or, so the official story was recorded.

Oliver knew more about the seedy side of city's water denizens than most people could even begin to guess.

“Hands and feet bound together,” he read, the words jumping out from the surrounding text as if they'd been enhanced just for him to see. “Shot once in the head.”

If there was a picture of the victim, it was on a part of the screen that he'd have to scroll down to see. Regardless, he knew what picture he _wouldn't_ see. And he suddenly understood why his teammates were acting the way they were. 

With a gesture at the screen, he said, “That's not about Stephen.”

“What?” Felicity asked. She straightened up so fast that the chair rocked. “Oliver? Are you sure? I mean, the article came in...and all the details...and then you came back so upset...” She bit her lip and stopped talking, waiting for Oliver to respond.

“He's alive,” Oliver spat. “I saved him.” He spun around, running his hand up over the back of his head. The short hair bristled under his touch. “That story's about a different kid.” Who had been tied up the same way Stephen had been when Oliver'd found him, which meant the kidnappers were killers, as well as repeat offenders.

Which meant that Stephen's kidnapping had probably never been about the ransom money.

Which meant that Stephen may have been the victim, after all.

Unless he was orchestrating the deaths of other kids just to bolster his own cover—and even Oliver had a hard time believing that about his cousin.

A grunt of exasperation escaped Oliver's mouth and he again felt his fingers curling with the anticipated need to punch something.

Diggle's jaw tensed, his brown eyes hardened. Oliver could see him struggling to give the benefit of the doubt to Oliver's sanity. “Are you sure?”

“He's alive,” Oliver repeated. He mentally ran through the events of the afternoon, trying to figure out how to summarize them in a way that wouldn't confirm to his friends what they already suspected about his mental health. The mere fact of his alternate identity already pushed the line of what they were willing to tolerate from him; he could only count himself lucky that they had agreed to help his cause instead of trying to save him, and he couldn't damage that now. “We got out of the building and got away. I went back to deal with the kidnappers.” That seemed simple enough so far as an explanation, with the benefit of being true. However, he knew it wouldn't be long before Felicity brought up the glitch in his boot tracker again. “By the time I got back, they were gone, so I came here.”

Crossing his arms, Diggle took in the slacks and polo shirt that Oliver had on, and his expression grew even more wary. “Didn't you have your Hood gear on when you left?”

Oliver nodded. “I had to ditch it along the way. Ran into Lance.”

Diggle's eyebrows went up. “That's a strange piece to leave out of the story. Did...both of you survive this run-in?”

The ringing of his phone interrupted Oliver's answer. He glanced at the display, noted the name of the caller, and then held the phone up for Diggle to see. “If he didn't, then he's figured out how to call from beyond the grave. Not that I'd put that past him.” Pushing the on button, he answered, “This is Queen,” reaching for his best bored playboy voice.

“I have your cousin down at the docks,” Lance responded, without any preamble. “You're going to come down here and get him.”

With a sigh that Oliver didn't even try to keep to himself, he asked, “What kind of trouble did he get into now?”

“Let's start with driving without a license,” Lance responded. A scraping noise obscured the phone signal, then Oliver heard Lance's muffled voice talking to someone in the background. When he came back online a moment later, he sounded weary. “Look, Queen, I don't have time to get into it. I have a murdered kid down here to investigate and a different kid who doesn't belong at a crime scene. His mother isn't picking up her phone, so I called you. Despite what _I_ think, the law does recognize you as a responsible adult.”

Oliver looked around at his friends, both of whom were watching him, their curiosity to hear Lance's side of the conversation so strong on their faces that he had to give them something. He offered a slight shrug and splay of his unoccupied hand like he couldn't believe what Lance was saying. That Felicity hadn't thought to patch into the call surprised him. “He's probably safer with you,” Oliver suggested. “A little tough love should straighten him right out.”

A gust of breath into the receiver crackled the connection. “Try me a different day, Queen. Until then, if you don't come pick up your cousin, I will charge _you_ with interfering with police business,” Lance snarled, and the line went dead.

For a couple moments, Oliver regarded the phone and the number that was still displayed on the screen. Hitting the end button—just in case—he pocketed the device. “Stephen's with Lance down at the docks. I have to go pick him up.”

“Detective Lance?” Felicity asked.

“Stephen,” Oliver corrected. He crossed to stand behind her, his eyes already sweeping the computer monitors for anything useful that she might have left unguarded. “Speaking of which, did you find out anything else about him?”

Felicity narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms, for the moment, at least, unwilling to jump to his requests. “You said there's something going on here that doesn't add up. I think there's lots of somethings.” She held the glare, her fingers gripping into the sweater's weave while trying to wear down his defenses with the power of her will. Oliver stood his ground and stared back. In only a few seconds, his eyes began to dry and he had to steel himself not to blink. He refused to give in, and so did she.

With a sudden awareness that made her bounce in the chair—and that broke the standoff—Felicity announced, “You know more than you're telling us.”

Rubbing his eyes, concentration momentarily broken, Oliver volleyed back, “I'm never going to tell you everything. A good relationship always has some secrets.” The comment was out before he had a chance to think it through. Rather than try to take it back, he ignored the blush that had sprung into Felicity's cheeks—as well as the fact that Felicity probably needed to know everything he'd learned so she could do her research properly—and reached over her shoulder toward the keyboard. As expected, she swatted his hand out of the way and closed herself around in the keyboard in the clearest _mine_ gesture he'd ever seen.

“How about we start with what you figured out?” Oliver asked. “Bring me up to speed.”

Felicity hesitated a moment longer, then swung into action with her usual eagerness to share her findings. “How well do you know your cousin?”

“I haven't seen him in five years, if that's what you mean,” Oliver responded wryly.

The blush deepened until she turned back to the monitors where their pale light washed the color away. “So this is the interesting thing. I've been digging into his history like you asked. He's only a teenager, so you wouldn't think there'd be a lot on him. But he's a teenager of the digital generation, and most of them have massive electronic footprints.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?” Oliver asked. “I have to get down to the docks before Lance sends a squad car to find me.”

“Actually, yes.” Felicity smiled and tapped the keyboard. A Facebook profile popped up on one screen. 

The profile was mostly whitespace and requests to fill in information. The picture was a blurry, partial profile of someone who could be any white teenager. Oliver only recognized it was Stephen because of how close they'd been over the last couple of hours. “That's his?”

“Yes. Well, no. But yes.”

“Felicity?”

“This wasn't what his page looked like when I first pulled it up.” She gestured at the screen. “For starters, his page was wide open for anyone to see. Not that there was much _to_ see. Even my Facebook page is less socially depressing.” She rolled her lips together, pursed them thoughtfully, then shook her head. “This page is what I found when I went _back_. It was locked down tight and all of the info on it was erased. Now, unless your cousin has suddenly become worried about online privacy, this is really weird.”

“Could it be a coincidence? Maybe he got a little spooked.” Diggle asked. He had come in to flank Felicity's other side while she and Oliver were talking. The three of them standing together like this sapped some of the tension from Oliver and he leaned in even closer to them.

“That was my first thought, too,” Felicity answered. “Then I started to wonder. It seems a lot like closing the barn door after the horse has died.” She flinched and cast a sideways glance at Oliver. “Or, in this case, after the horse has been captured and is being held hostage. I mean, if I were in that situation, the last thing I'd be using my cellphone for is _erasing_ my online profile. I'd be tweeting 911s to everyone I knew.”

Oliver nodded. Though he was still getting up-to-speed to the sheer proliferation of social media that had taken over while he'd been away, the wisdom of calling for help made sense no matter what method was used. The way Stephen's hands had been bound, though, would have prevented any use of his cellphone, even if he had been able to get it out of his pocket. 

Then again, after the rescue, Stephen had been back at the mansion by himself. He could have done anything in that time.

“So someone did it for him,” Oliver concluded. “He has an accomplice.”

“Sure,” Felicity answered. “But why? So I dug a little deeper.” She hit a key and the screen changed. Oliver had to squint to see the tiny letters contained in the screen capture pictured on it. “This was sent to him right around the time that your boot locator glitched.” Again, she gestured at the screen, though this time Oliver caught her peering at him from the corner of her eye while she spoke. She really was not going to leave that alone.

To keep from getting sucked into explaining what had happened during the “glitch,” he read out the cellphone text message that Felicity was pointing to. “'I've started fumigating. I will let you know when the air is clear.'” While he let the message sink in, his eye skipped up the screen, noting the date and time of the send as well as the sender's name. “Who's Tim?” Another detail sunk in, and he set one hand on the back of Felicity's chair, while he confirmed that he wasn't reading wrong. “And why doesn't he have a last name?”

“Those,” Felicity answered, “are both excellent questions.”

“It sounds like a code,” Diggle interrupted. “Not a very good one either. Fumigating? You said this message was sent right before the Facebook page was erased?”

Felicity nodded.

“Did this 'Tim' say anything else?” Diggle asked. “Did Stephen respond?”

“No, that's the only message Stephen has received all day,” Felicity answered. She swept a loose tendril of hair behind her ear and scowled as it promptly fell back across her nose. “Did I mention that he doesn't seem to have much of a social life?” 

“So we need to find out who Tim is,” Oliver stated. With a glance at his watch, and a cringe at how long this short conversation had already taken up, he added, “And I need to get going.” He straightened up and swung his arms back, seeking to loosen muscles that had gone from active use to unmoving with no warm down. His shirt stretched taut with each swing.

Next to him, Diggle murmured something in Felicity's ear, then stood up as well. “I'll drive.”

“I've got the bike,” Oliver argued.

“The more we learn about what's going on, the less we know.” He stabbed a finger Oliver's direction. “ _Your_ story has so many holes in it that even a slumlord would complain. I get nervous when the intel doesn't add up. So, I'm going to drive, and you're going to fill us in on everything that happened. Everything _you_ found out.” He headed toward the door, his solid step and confident posture that of a man leading the troops and having no doubt that they would follow.

Oliver rolled his eyes. It wouldn't be hard to give Diggle the slip once they were outside. Then again, he had picked up a few clues about who the kidnappers might be. “Fine,” he agreed.

“I'll just keep plugging away,” Felicity offered from behind them. She sounded more excited about the task than a person getting left alone in an empty basement should. “This Tim has just met his—or her—match. I'm going to find out everything he never wanted me to know.”


	5. Chapter 5

“This is your lucky day, kid,” Detective Lance stated as the patrol car coasted to a stop. The scene was already taped off and people flitted about photographing and recording, measuring and assessing. Lance took it all in, sighed, then regathered himself. The man who had been willing to hide in wait for his chance to pounce on an unsuspecting target gave way to calm professionalism. “I'm going to let you off with only a warning. This time. Stay put and I'll give your mom a call to pick you up.”

He gestured toward a small building that advertised rental of canoes and kayaks. A wooden bench sat pressed against one wall, its wood roughened and stained from years of salt water and wind. It was far enough away from the crime scene that Stephen wouldn't be getting underfoot, yet close enough that it would be hard for him to disappear without drawing attention. 

Well, Stephen amended, hard to get up and walk away.

He caught the detective again looking at him in the rear-view mirror, his eyebrows raised like he knew exactly what Stephen was thinking and was daring him to try it. Stephen squirmed against the fabric seat. For someone who actually _could_ read minds, he still found it discomfiting when others acted like they could too. And it wasn't like he was planning either method of egress. His teleporting ability was too uncertain right now—just the thought of returning to that room in the warehouse _again_ turned his stomach—and he wasn't likely to get far on his own two feet in this unknown city. No, he was better off following directions and using the time to try to figure out the world's most awesome excuse.

“Got it,” he confirmed. Reflexively, he reached for the door handle, and found that there wasn't one. Though small, and totally one he should have anticipated, this latest defeat felt like salt on an open wound. He pinched his eyes against the prickle of tears and slumped down. [Cara?] he thought. [John? Would one of you like to tap in? I'm done.]

No response came.

He doubted that anyone had even heard him.

The car door opened, letting in a rush of sea-scented air, and a reassuring hand landed on Stephen's shoulder. Right on his bruise. He flinched and the hand withdrew. “Your mom will be here for you soon,” Lance stated, as if he thought that was what Stephen wanted to hear—thus proving that he wasn't secretly a telepath. “Watch your back with your cousin,” he added. “Oliver's not who you think he is.”

Stephen had no response for that. With a groan, he pulled himself out of the car and trudged to the bench to await his sentencing. 

He had no sense that he'd nodded off until the bench shook under the weight of another person coming to sit on it. Blearily, he blinked his eyes open and took in the woman who had appeared at his side. Her long brown hair drifted in the breeze and her blue eyes held a look of bemusement. “You look like you could use a vacation,” Cara commented, a smile playing around her lips. 

“I'm on vacation,” Stephen reminded her. He scrubbed a hand down his face in a vain attempt to wipe away the heaviness that he could feel infusing every muscle. “Two weeks on the scenic northwest coast, relaxing with the family in luxurious accommodations....”

“Some vacation. You know, there's no award for getting kidnapped in every state by the end of the year,” Cara replied. “Or are you the kind of person who doesn't know how to relax?”

“You spent a year playing ride-along in my head,” Stephen answered. “You tell me.”

Cara slid a hand over his knee and leaned closer. “I think that you need to start being more careful. We need you.”

He started to shrug, a gesture that was both an appeal to innocence and defeat. It wasn't like he was the one going around kidnapping himself, and what was he supposed to do? Move into the subway tunnel with the rest of the Tomorrow People and live like a fugitive? Though the time might come for that, he wasn't ready now to give up. “Did you hear me call you,” Stephen asked, “or is this just a random 'let's see how much trouble the noob is in' visit?”

Cara looked away, her expression darkening. “Neither. TIM has been monitoring the situation out here--” She shifted uncomfortably on the bench as if concerned how the confession would go over. TIM, their supercomputer, had access to all the information that made the public networks, and quite a lot that existed only behind firewalls. He needed physical eyes and ears to fill in the gaps, though. When Stephen didn't respond, she continued, “He sent me to find out what's going on over there.” She waved toward the cordoned off area of the marina and the bevy of investigators who were busily taking the scene apart in search of information. “We figured it's related to what happened to you?”

Stephen nodded. “I think so.” He considered what he'd heard on the police scanner and what his gut told him. The latter wasn't tied to a superpower—that he was aware of—but it hadn't led him wrong yet. “Yes. I think...they came after me when they were done with him.”

“Let's see what else we can find out.” Closing her eyes, Cara leaned back against the weather-worn wood of the rental building. Had any of the bystanders convening around the crime scene thought to look at the two youths sitting behind them, they might have seen Cara relaxing, taking in the last of the afternoon's warmth before the setting sun lost to the ocean's chill.

Stephen knew otherwise. The tight lines of concentration around Cara's mouth gave away the fact that she was scanning the minds of the investigators and the bystanders, seeking any useful information that may be out there. He drew a deep breath of the salty air, felt the incoming chill wend its way down the core of his body, and shivered. 

“Are you getting anything?” Cara asked, eyes still closed.

He licked his lips, contemplated pretending to ignore her or coming up with a lie, and finally stated, softly, “My powers aren't working. Kind of.”

Cara's brow furrowed and one eye peeked open. “Aren't working? As in something's blocking them?”

He shook his head, but didn't elaborate. Listening to the cawing and chattering of the seagulls as they circled the increasing crowd was about all that he had the energy for right now. In case she understood that and decided to get the lowdown by scanning him, too, he carefully didn't think about the details of his day.

She didn't press. Though he wasn't certain, he suspected that she'd left his mind untouched, too. She went back to scanning the crowd. “We thought you'd be safe here,” she said, at last. “Jedikiah's reach has never been as long as he believes it is.” She licked her lips and studied him. “Or maybe that's just what _we_ wanted to think.” Abruptly, her face twisted in horror. “My god, Stephen. What did he do to him?” [What did he do to you?]

Pulling up his sleeves, Stephen displayed his wrists. Raw red marks were cut into his wrists from the bonds, dark bruises marring his lower forearms. He could have pushed the hem of his shirt up and shown her the contusions on his ribs from where his captors had kicked him, but the breath Cara sucked in at seeing his arms stayed him. She bent down and tugged the leg of his jeans up. While his socks had protected his ankles, the copious bruising that darkened his lower legs gave mute evidence of how tightly he'd been constrained.

“But why? Did Jedikiah figure out that you've been playing both sides?”

Stephen blew out a long breath. “It wasn't--” A long, loud rumble from his stomach interrupted him. The scrambled egg and orange juice he'd had for breakfast now seemed like a hallucination. “It wasn't Jedikiah. Someone else is operating out here. Someone who is looking for one of us.”

Cara cut him a sharp, sideways glance. “Looking for? You mean they didn't _know_?”

“I guess they have a profile.” He looked toward the where the police were working and thought about the teen whose body warranted all that activity. The kid must not have been able to get away, which meant he probably hadn't been a Tomorrow Person. Stephen peered down at Cara's hand, still on his knee. “There were eight of them, I think, in the building with me. At least four had no idea who their target was...until they figured out who I was.”

Cara's eyebrows went up. “Stephen, what did they see?” Panic seeped through her touch, and Stephen had to break the contact in order to pull his thoughts together enough to answer.

“They didn't see me use my powers. I was careful,” he answered, no doubt in either of their minds that he understood exactly what she was worried about, and why. The Tomorrow People had spent years trying to keep themselves from discovery, and yet in so many ways they had failed miserably. “I'm not sure they even wanted me for my powers. At least, at first.” He raked his hands through his hair and groaned. “Their thoughts were all over the place and it was hard to figure out what I was even hearing, much less who knew what.”

Cara reached for his knee again, then stopped herself and pulled back. “I don't understand.”

“Have you ever heard of Queen Consolidated?”

“Of course. Who hasn't?”

“That's my _other_ side of the family. The Queens.”

Her tone dry, she replied, “Some pedigree.”

“I think--” He swallowed. “I think they came after me because of the Queens, figured out I fit their other profile, and then decided to see which one they could make pay off first.”

“But you got away.”

“I was rescued,” Stephen confessed. “But it's not over. I know it's not. Either way you cut it, I'm screwed. There's always going to be someone out there who thinks that coming after me is the best way to wealth--”

“--Or world domination,” she finished for him. Whether she was referring to his Uncle Jedikiah's plan to “save” humanity by destroying the Tomorrow People, or whether she was extrapolating the kind of power one might gain by having access to the Queen fortune, he didn't know. Frankly, it didn't really matter, what with his body and life being the things on the line.

Not just _his_ body and life, either.

“I have to stop them,” he stated. “There's not much I can do about the Queen side, but if they're really going after potential Tomorrow People, I have to stop them before they kill anyone else.” His fists clenched as he steeled himself to argue with her. Though he wasn't mentally up to it, he had no choice but to try.

“Of course,” Cara said.

Her acceptance was so simply stated that Stephen blinked in surprise. “You're not going to try to stop me?”

“Stephen, we haven't been able to stop you from doing anything you got it into your head to do. You really do need to get some rest before you go charging after your enemy, though. You're not going to be able to save anyone if you don't take care of your own needs first.”

Recognizing the truth of what she said, Stephen nodded slowly. His vision danced and his stomach let out another loud growl.

“Do you wanna get out of here? I can take you back to the lair. You'd be safe there.”

“My mom's on her way here to pick me up,” Stephen replied. “I can't not be here.”

Cara regarded him for a moment, then dug into her pocket. The matte black phone rested darkly against the pale skin of her palm. “Russell said you needed one of these?” Thumbing it on, she pushed a few buttons, her face creased in concentration, then offered it back to him. “I programmed a number in. It's a payphone outside the Broad Street station. I'll wait there. Call if you need me.”

The GPS function had been what Stephen needed the phone for. With his ride home now assured, he could have easily turned the offer down. Instead he took the device, glanced at the number, and offered a tired smile. “I will,” he promised.

“You'd better,” Cara replied. With that, she gave Stephen's knee one last squeeze of reassurance, stood up, and disappeared around the side of the building.

Stephen collapsed back on the bench and stared mindlessly at the few boats that still occupied their slips in the marina. Masts bobbed and decks swayed, and bystanders continued to gather around the boundaries of the police tape, the crowd growing ever larger. So much activity and interest in the body of one teenage boy. He wondered how many of them were interested in more than the gory details of the death itself; how many of them knew, or would care to learn, anything about the life that had been snuffed out.

“Get up.”

After everything else, when Stephen looked up and saw Oliver standing in front of him instead of his mother, he felt only resignation. The plastic of the phone had grown warm in his hand; he closed his grip around it without caring whether Oliver saw and levered himself up.

“Go wait for me in the car,” Oliver continued, his commanding tone not letting up at all. Stephen could hear the anger coiled beneath it; the two of them were definitely _not_ okay. “I need to check in with Lance.” He started to walk away, then turned back. “Don't even think about trying to disappear.”

Raising his hand in a mock Scout salute, Stephen responded with a weary, “I promise,” before heading in the direction Oliver had indicated.

The car was a nothing-special sedan with the kinds of battle scars and dents that cars should accrue through normal usage. Stephen had a moment of pause on seeing it because, certainly, Oliver would have a limo or a sports car or something. At the very least, he'd take his cars in for body work if they so much as got breathed on wrong. Then the driver's side door swung open and a muscular black man stepped out. His gaze assessed Stephen in one long sweep that finished without any judgment being passed.

“I'm John Diggle, Mr. Queen's bodyguard and driver,” the man stated. His gaze swept over Stephen once more, like he'd been searching for one kind of information on the first pass and had now moved on to more important details. “How long has it been since you've eaten?”

Stephen started, hand halfway to the backdoor. “I... don't know?”

Diggle nodded and pulled the door open. “Do you have any special dietary needs?”

Unlike the police car, the backseat of this vehicle was comfortable and smelled only of air freshener. Stephen slid over the worn fabric and settled into the spot behind the front passenger seat. He assumed Oliver would be sitting in the front when he returned, and somehow sitting behind him seemed safer than sitting where Oliver could glare at him. “Even if I did, I wouldn't today,” Stephen returned. He was honestly too hungry to care what he put in his stomach.

“Big Belly Burger, it is,” Diggle nodded. “You get comfortable. Just so you know, Mr. Queen's been very worried about your well-being.”

“He has?”

Diggle's lips spread into a tight line. “That's between us. It's also between us that he's going to treat you to dinner.”

Out the window, Stephen could see his cousin's blond head bobbing through the crowd. His expression was stern—though Stephen couldn't recall Oliver's expression being anything _except_ stern...when it wasn't enraged—and Stephen decided that there was hope for their relationship yet.

Diggle placed the call and ended up ordering four burgers, fries, and drinks to be picked up in 15 minutes. He recited the credit card number for payment from memory, listened to the confirmation information, and hung up the phone. “Mr. Queen is a very generous man,” he commented.

“Who's generous?” Oliver asked, opening the same passenger door that Stephen had used a few minutes earlier.

“My boss,” Diggle answered immediately, “And he never lets me forget it.”

This kind of banter had an air of comfort to it that Stephen wondered at. This John Diggle was clearly more than just a chauffeur. Did he know about Oliver's secret identity, too? Was there any way to ask?

With a flick of his fingers, Oliver motioned them onward. Diggle smoothly drove them through the restaurant, picked up the waiting order, and handed Stephen's back to him without Oliver exhibiting the least surprise. 

It was the best damn hamburger Stephen had ever tasted. Living in New York City gave him access to all kinds of variety in food, and he lived only a few blocks from one of the best burger restaurants in the city, but he rarely had the kind of money to take advantage of what the area had to offer. When he did eat out, it was McDonald's or Burger King, and neither of those held a candle to what he was putting in his mouth right now.

They approached a stoplight and Diggle drew the car to an early stop. “Where to, Mr. Queen?” he asked, his sudden formality in stark contrast to his earlier teasing.

Oliver regarded Stephen for a long, intense moment that should have made Stephen squirm. Instead, Stephen met the stare and held it. His lips were still greasy from the burger and he was in the process of trying to clean his fingers on the thin paper napkin the restaurant had provided, yet he'd never felt less intimidated.

At last Oliver answered the question. “The club, Dig.”

Diggle rubbed at the back of his neck. In profile, his expression stayed unchanged, though Stephen caught the corner of his eye twitching. “Are you sure?”

“He already knows.” Oliver forced out a breath through his nose, the tendons in his neck tensing as he reconciled himself to the inevitable. “I think it's time for us to pool our information, and we're going to need Felicity.”

Without comment, Diggle swung the car into the right lane and took the next corner.

They rode in tense silence. Oliver and Diggle seemed to be having some kind of silent argument with each other via the rear view mirror. Even if Stephen could have read their minds right now, he would have stayed out. As he was coming to learn, there were times when not knowing what people were thinking really was the smartest move.

He let his head loll against the door, and tried to keep his shoulder angled not to rest on the bruise. He poked idly at another bruise on his leg, as if touching it would magically made it feel better. And why, he wondered, didn't the Tomorrow People have the power to heal with a touch? It seemed like, with everything else they could do, that they should definitely have that power.

The club turned out to be an actual club, like the kind that people went to do dance and get drunk. Stephen had been half-expecting a golf club or a country club, some kind of white building nestled away from the rest of humanity where rich people could go to pat themselves on the back for being rich. 

Instead it was exactly the kind of place where Stephen could see himself hanging out. When he was old enough, of course.

They parked and headed in a back door, then down a dark flight of stairs to the basement. Stephen kept a hand on the wall the whole time.

The basement door opened onto a high-tech workroom. Stephen's eyes widened in surprise as he took in what he was seeing. This was steps above the lair the Tomorrow People had constructed for themselves in the abandoned subway station. “Nice,” Stephen breathed.

At the sound of the door opening, a blonde woman who was crouched over a workstation full of computers jumped to her feet. “You're back!” she exclaimed. Her ponytail was skewed, like she'd been tugging at it, and her cheeks were flushed with excitement. Inhaling deeply, she took in the scent of burgers from the bag in Diggle's hand. “Is that dinner?” She rubbed her stomach. “We're definitely going to need dinner. Tonight's going to be a late one. You'll never guess what I've--”

Stephen had come fully into the room by then with Oliver and Diggle flanking him like they were his bodyguards.

“You brought a visitor?” the woman continued, planting a hand on her hip.“Really? Neither of you thought to warn me?”

“Felicity, this is my cousin, Stephen,” Oliver introduced, like he found the whole thing distasteful. “Stephen, Felicity.”

Narrowing her eyes at him, Felicity took in his bedraggled clothes and drawn face. She pointed to a table over near one wall. “I'm the person who still prides herself on the humanity she was born with. Go sit over there and take your shirt off.”

Stephen barely blinked at the command. So many people had ordered him to remove his shirt in the past weeks that it was starting to feel routine.

The metal table was cold and hard, and it rocked slightly on its wheels as he sat down. Felicity dug around underneath it and came up with a first aid kit which she disassembled on the table next to him. “I don't know when I became the team's doctor,” she stated, as she tore open a packet of disinfecting wipes. “This is definitely not what I went to college for.” Stephen hissed as she started cleaning the wounds on his wrists.

“Did they do anything else to you?” Diggle asked, taking in the wounds with a knowing eye.

“You mean like kick me in the ribs or threaten me with a gun?” Stephen asked. The sarcasm he was aiming for fell flat in the face of how much worse he could have been treated. The captors hadn't gotten as far as killing him. A few bruises and scrapes seemed like he was getting off easy by comparison.

“To start with,” Diggle answered in all seriousness.

Stephen shook his head. “They beat me up a little when they first got me. I tried to fight, but there were too many of them.” He sighed and hung his head, thinking of how he'd been tackled from behind while out for a jog. The morning had been quiet, the street calm and peaceful. He'd let himself be lulled into complacency with the assumption that the dangers he battled in New York had been left in New York. 

When the first attacker had jogged up behind him, Stephen thought nothing of it. He'd already passed two other early-morning runners, so someone running faster than him was nothing to be concerned about. The impact had so surprised him that by the time he even thought to teleport out or telekinetically push his assailant away, three others had joined the fray. They'd kicked him in the ribs, knocked him on the head, and pointed the first gun at his face. 

That's when he overheard the guy he would later come to recognize as the leader thinking, “Vanish. I dare you.”

Stephen understood in that moment that the leader was on the lookout for teleporters, and was hoping to catch one. If he had to do it through damaging the target a little, then that's what he'd do. Teleporting was quick, nearly instantaneous. For someone who was prepared and had a quick trigger finger, that 'nearly' could be enough time to get an injuring shot off. Which meant that Stephen had effectively become trapped, until he could figure another way to escape.

“Why did you let them do it?” Oliver asked. He crossed his arms, stance set wide. He, alone, hadn't come over to inspect Stephen's wounds.

“Oliver!” Felicity chided as she wrapped on fresh bandages.

“He knows what I'm asking,” Oliver replied, his tone deadly serious. “Why didn't you get yourself away?”

“There were too many of them,” Stephen answered. He paused, trying to figure out how to frame his real answer without giving everything away to the two other people in the room. “I couldn't concentrate. Also, I needed to find out why they had come after me. If I got away and they just came after me again, they'd be better prepared the next time. Maybe they'd have drugs or better weapons, and I had to know what I was dealing with.”

“So, you're not working with them?”

“Oliver!” Felicity reprimanded again.

“I am definitely not working with them,” Stephen replied. “I know you don't trust me, and I guess you really don't have reason to, but I did cover for your ass back at the warehouse.”

“What's he talking about?” Diggle asked, turning to look at Oliver.

“He rescued me,” Stephen replied, “I saved him. I'd say we're trading off on who owes who. Is that why you picked me up from the marina? So that you could claim another favor since you saved me from my mother killing me?”

“I picked you up because Detective Lance didn't give me a choice,” Oliver replied, flatly.

“Figures.” With his open wounds now tended to, Stephen hopped down from the table and slipped his shirt back on. The fabric felt stiff with dried sweat, a texture that he hadn't even noticed before. He wrinkled his nose at it.

“Now that you're here, and we're all at least nominally on the same side,” Felicity interjected, shooting a poisonous glare at Oliver, “it's my turn to ask questions.” Packaging up the unused parts of the first aid kit, she put it away back under the table. The garbage, she swept up and deposited in a nearby garbage can. She stopped, put a hand on her hip, and frowned. “There are a lot of questions.”

“That's not a question,” Diggle pointed out.

“I know it's not a question.” Felicity huffed out a sigh of frustration. She tugged the elastic band from her ponytail and set to work finger-combing her hair back into place. “Speaking of questions, I have to show you what I found while you were out.” She started back to the workstation and stopped when no one followed her.

Oliver had recrossed his arms the other direction and taken a step toward Stephen. “You said you found out about me because you read my mind.” He didn't even wait for the nod Stephen gave him before continuing, “So, if you read my mind, then you must have read your kidnappers' minds, too. What do you know about them?”

Felicity stiffened, her unbound hair fell in a loose, warped wave over her shoulders. “Did you seriously ask him about mind-reading? As in, being able to hear people's thoughts? Oliver, you should know better. Thoughts are electric impulses between the synapses in our brains. There's no way that--”

“I can read minds,” Stephen stated, simply. To Oliver, he added, “Would you mind not telling everyone you know, though? I mean, it's not like you don't understand having secrets you don't want to share with everyone, so what's your deal?”

Oliver ignored him, choosing to address Felicity instead. “He's not making it up. Believe me. Try not to think too much around him. I still haven't decided if he should be trusted.”

“Hey!” Stephen protested.

“Try not to—Oliver, I can't just shut my thoughts off. One idea leads to another with connections all over the place. Especially when I'm around you, my thoughts are always turned on.” She stopped, blushed, and scrabbled for a grip on her loose hair as if she could rewind the conversation by returning to an earlier action. 

“I mean,” she continued, “my thoughts just go a mile-a-minute and the projects we're always working on. Once I start thinking about things, sometimes I can't stop. And then I find myself laying in bed...at night...thinking...I'm going to stop talking now.” Despite her fumbling and distraction from concentrating, she was finally able to get the pony tail back together. The elastic snapped into place and a solid yank on the tail concluded her effort and punctuated her assertion. “And true mind-reading is still completely unattested.”

Oliver's expression was trapped between amusement and confusion, an expression that gave way to stern again as he returned his attention to Stephen. “You haven't answered the question.”

“I haven't had a chance,” Stephen pointed out. He rubbed a hand over his head in a gesture reminiscent of the one Oliver made. Recalling what he'd heard while locked up in the warehouse was harder than he'd imagined. While he'd only been there a few hours ago, a lot had happened in the intervening time. Combined with the fact that repressing the whole thing sounded like a good coping mechanism, and he was already having trouble trusting that he remembered what he thought he did. 

A long minute passed with the three staring at him. “We're waiting,” Oliver prodded. “I'll warn you now that trying to read my mind to feed me the answers you think I want to hear is not a healthy strategy.”

Stephen snapped. “First of all,” he said, “I'm not reading anyone's mind.” He turned to Felicity, who wore an expression like she was on standby to find any holes his claim. “If you want proof, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow, after I've gotten a long night's sleep.” 

Now to Diggle, who actually looked cautiously curious. “Second, I've only been able to read minds for a couple of weeks and there's still a lot I haven't learned about how to actually use my powers. Yes, _powers_. Plural. Since I'm sure that Oliver is just going to casually mention those, too, at some point.” 

And back to Oliver who was as threateningly-unamused as ever. “If you want detailed analysis of what was going through my kidnapper's heads, I'm sorry, but you're not going to get it. I picked up some things, like how they were planning on ransoming me for more money than I'll earn in my lifetime and how they were going to kill me if they didn't get that ransom. Except for the one who had actually kidnapped me _because_ of my powers, and he was only going to kill me if it turned out that I didn't have any. I'm pretty certain that the people who took me were _not ___on the same page about why they had come after me.

“So, are we good? Do you want to beat me up a little, maybe finish what my kidnappers started so that you can find out all the other things I've forgotten to mention?” He was shouting now, his words echoing off the walls. His whole body trembled with the effort to hold his ground.

The three offered no response when he finished. 

Stephen waited, knees shaking. Abruptly, the last of his reserves drained and he slumped, falling back against the lab table. He slapped out a hand to catch himself, but the table rolled away. Stephen fell limply to the floor where he folded in on himself.

Hands were immediately on him, hauling him back up and helping him onto the lab table. It was still cold and hard, but he'd moved past the point of being picky about where he slept. A blanket fell over him and something soft was shoved under his head. He had no idea who was helping him. Perhaps everyone was. They must have done this kind of thing before, he thought, because there was no discussion, just coordinated effort.

“So what do we do now?” Felicity's voice sounded distant.

“We should eat,” Diggle suggested. “Big Belly is best when it's hot.” The paper bag rustled and a fresh waft of hamburger scent reached Stephen's nose.

More rustling. Footsteps. The high pitched hum of computer speakers coming to life.

“What was it you wanted us to see?” Oliver asked.

“That's the strangest thing,” Felicity answered. “When I was researching, I found...Well, it's a little hard to explain because it technically shouldn't exist yet. I mean, it does. But we're only in the beginnings of seeing the Turing Test passed...And you don't know what the Turing Test is.”

As unconsciousness pressed in on Stephen, he heard a mellifluous voice coming from the direction of the computer workstation. “Perhaps I can be of some help,” the new, yet familiar, voice suggested.

Mouthing the name, Stephen slipped away into darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My deepest apologies for this chapter taking well over a year to post. Aside from The Tomorrow People being on air in 2014, the year as a whole was horribleness, which reached its nadir in July when my laptop got fried and I lost everything-including an earlier version of this chapter. By complete fluke, I stumbled across a backup in November, which is the only reason this update happened at all. The bad news is that I lost all the notes related to this story in the Great Crash. The good news is that I still plan to finish the story because I like this crossover way too much and the feedback so far has been way too positive. It's just going to take awhile as I work to reconstruct what I was doing. Thank you for your patience.
> 
> Also, I've made a couple of (very minor) adjustments to earlier chapters to bring the ages of the characters and what details I could in line with TTP canon. Details such as how teleporting works are too intrinsic to the story to adjust, so slap an AU label on this, if you haven't already, and let's keep going.

“Who are you?” Oliver rounded toward the speaker, his fists coming up once again in preparation to attack. This new intruder, this new breach in his defenses, was a step too far. While he'd chosen to bring Stephen in—a reluctant but necessary choice, if there ever was one—he had _not_ invited this new interloper. But he saw nothing to hit. “Where are you?” He heard the gravel drop into his voice, an approximation of the changes from the vocal synthesizer, and felt his senses sharpen, burying the mental distractions of the last few hours and making him more attuned to the details of _now_. 

A steadying breath in through his nose, and then he held it and listened. Over the hum of lights and higher frequency of the computer monitors, he heard Felicity's short, sharp breaths of excitement, Diggle's slower, regular ones, and a thin wheeze from Stephen, followed by a snort and the rustle of the blanket as Stephen shifted beneath it. Pipes clicked and thrummed; he smelled the dank and dust of a basement that would always carry reminders how long it had been forgotten beneath its abandoned building. Cutting through that were the scents of Felicity’s perfume and Diggle’s aftershave layered over the stronger presence of his scent from all the hundreds of hours he’d spent working out and practicing down here.

“Show yourself!”

“Ah, Oliver?” Felicity stepped between him and the console and made a placating gesture. “You can stand down. He's a friend. Well, a friend of a friend, if you want to get technical...Technical. It's all technical.” She let out a short, sharp giggle. “He's definitely not an enemy. I mean, I haven't had a chance to run a full diagnostic, yet...”

“Nor would I permit you to,” the mystery speaker interjected. 

The voice that resonated through the computer's speakers was male with an English accent, nothing surprising or atypical, though something in it pinged wrong for Oliver and set him even more on edge. His eyes flicked toward his cousin, who was sacked out on the lab table—limbs so slack they looked like he was starting to melt—and unable to either read his mind or to play a crass ventriloquism joke. He didn't know how, but he knew that his cousin and this voice were connected. “Who is he?” He directed the question at Felicity this time, making no effort to hide the accusation. She had effectively let a stranger into the headquarters, allowed him to sit on an open line. Who knew what he had heard. Who knew what he would do with what he had heard.

Felicity dropped her head, as if understanding that she had gone too far. “Guys, this is Tim.” She paused, waiting for her teammates to catch up. Despite the resignation in her tone, Oliver caught the corners of her mouth twitching like she was trying to contain a smile. She knew more than she was telling them. Oliver's eyes narrowed.

“Wait,” Diggle interjected. “You found him? With so little to go on? This is the guy from the text message, right?” He sounded impressed, but Oliver found himself scowling hard. Of all the uninvited guests, Felicity had brought them someone who had actively worked to conceal Stephen's actions and to erase his identity. Despite the flimsiness of the cover-up notification Tim had sent, the cover-up itself suggested a depth of computer skill that even Oliver could appreciate. 

“Well, yes, sort of—” Felicity started, then trailed into waving her hands in the air in a futile attempt to pull the words she wanted from the ether. Apparently giving up, she stumbled back to more familiar ground. “Tim, these are the people I was telling you about: Oliver Queen and John Diggle.” She indicated each of them in turn, as if this Tim was standing right there and could see them. He probably could, Oliver realized, via the webcam. He could see everything. So why wasn't there a two-way feed so that Oliver and Diggle could see him? What did Tim have to hide?

“Diggle,” Diggle corrected. He didn’t seem at all concerned about the security issues; though, Oliver speculated, maybe that was because he hadn't spent the afternoon spiraling down the rabbit-hole that was Stephen's life. 

TIM let out a deep-throated chuckle. “I will keep that in mind. John is a common name. And Oliver...?” He paused like he expected Oliver to also supply a nickname. When Oliver gave only a grunt of acknowledgment, Tim concluded, “It's a pleasure to meet you both.”

Felicity cocked her head at the conclusion of the pleasantries. Her eyes shone with excitement. “Were you programmed to say that? Or do you actually understand what it means? Social rituals aren't exactly hard to program, as long as everyone participating in them remembers to be polite.” She shot a glare at Oliver, then her excitement finally too much to contain, blurted out, “Tim's an AI.” 

Diggle's eyebrows shot up. “An artificial intelligence?” Under his breath, he added, “I'll bet ARGUS would love to know about that.”

It had been a long time since Oliver’d heard anyone talk about AIs. He had a distant memory of the insane HAL-9000 from _2001_ and the signature calmness by which he killed everyone on the ship in order to protect them. He hoped that was only theatrical dramatics and not an accurate representation of how AIs were supposed to work. With his luck, it probably wasn't. “Isn’t that supposed to be impossible?”

Felicity gave a small bounce and a nod, her excitement so strong that Oliver could see her quivering. “Standard belief is that we’re decades away from being able to create a true artificial intelligence, and that doesn’t even get into the questions of whether we _should_. Tim, however, appears to be the real thing.” She hung her head again. “An AI that I, sadly, had no part in creating.”

A grin cracked Diggle’s face. “You’ll get your chance.”

With a jerk of his chin, Oliver summoned Felicity away from the workstation and into a corner of the basement out of reach of the microphone and webcam. “What are you doing?” he asked, keeping his volume down and his face angled away in case the pickups were more powerful than he thought. Knowing Felicity's love of upgrades, the whole basement could be compromised right now and she didn't seem to be aware of that at all. 

“Artificial intelligence, Oliver. You have no idea how exciting this is.” Her eyes glimmered as she spoke and a flush rose high in her cheeks. She was leaning toward the computers like they were drawing her back. “It's amazing, and-and … revolutionary! Can you imagine what a discovery like this will mean for--” She stopped, her mouth open, and arms flailing. “Everything.”

If there was one thing Oliver had grown sick of that day, it was imagining how everything he knew about the world was going to change. And no day should contain as many upsets as this one had. “What makes you think he's telling the truth? What makes you think he's even the right Tim?”

Felicity gasped and drew back, burned at his accusation. “I know a few things about how to use a computer,” she informed him. “If you're accusing me of making a rookie mistake--”

He stayed her with a light touch on her arm. “I'm only worried about how little we know about this person. Diggle and I weren't even gone 30 minutes. That's not very long.”

“It's long enough for those of us who work in computer time,” she insisted, yet a quaver in her voice gave away that she wasn't as confident as she'd first presented herself.

Oliver tried to catch her eye, to hold her attention. “You are an expert with computers, Felicity, not a computer yourself. Even you said that you didn't run a full diagnostic. What if this guy is just better than you?”

Her mouth tightened and her eyes turned steely. He'd struck a nerve, and one much deeper than he'd thought. “I wasn't born yesterday, Oliver. In fact, when it comes to computers--”

“Oliver,” Diggle interrupted. “You need to see this.”

Felicity snapped her mouth shut and directed a glare at Oliver as if she'd realized that no words were going to get through his thick skull. He met her full on. She knew how important his mission was, how dangerous it was. From the bribes they paid officials to not look too closely at the club, to the electronic data she manipulated, to the veneer of their cover stories in public, so many variables had to be constantly monitored so they wouldn't get caught. All it took to destroy everything was to let the wrong person see too much. Why couldn't she understand that?

“Now!” Diggle ordered.

Oliver broke the glare-off and turned toward his other partner. Diggle leaned over the workstation, hands pressed flat on the table. In front of him were spread the burgers, still in their paper wrappings. “Give us a minute, Dig. The food can wait...” He trailed off as he caught up with all the details of the scene. Diggle had started to unpack the burgers, yes, but that's not what he was interested in now. A flute of french fries had fallen from the table, the contents scattered on the floor, and Diggle hadn't noticed. His gaze was riveted on the screen in front of him.

Anything that Diggle thought was that important, Oliver would drop everything to help with—including his argument with Felicity. 

Five police reports were opened on the center screen, arranged so they were all displayed at once. Pictured in the corner of each report was the victim, each posed in their school photographs with their stiff postures and insincere smiles. They were all too young.

“What is this?” Oliver asked, winging the question toward the computer like one of his arrows. He'd been doing nothing but asking questions, and he was really getting tired of the shortage of answers. 

The fan on the computer whirred to life for a moment before Tim answered. “Stephen's...incident today is not the first time he—or one of the other Tomorrow People—has been targeted because of his abilities. Nor, it seems, will it be the last. After the discovery of the second victim today, I began reviewing missing persons' reports and suspicious death cases that match the profile of the one we had today. I've turned up five more that bear a 99% probability of being related: teenagers, bound and beaten, and found dead. All of them turned up in a river or lake, which suggests that the culprits may have even more victims whose bodies have not been found.”

“Wait. The Tomorrow People?” Diggle asked. “What the hell is that?”

Under her breath, Felicity muttered, “You asked, not me.”

TIM made a noise like a truncated chuckle. A computer wouldn't make that noise, wouldn't have any reason _to_ make that noise. Is this what artificial intelligence meant, or was Tim just a hacker with too much skill and a sick sense of humor? Felicity seemed so certain. Even Diggle wasn't questioning the identification. Oliver listened more closely, searching for the residual sounds of a person using a microphone: breathing, a tongue clicking, fingers tapping, a body shifting its weight. TIM's response came through modulated and unmarked: “It is the name for what Stephen is. He, and all the others like him.”

 _The others_ , Oliver thought, leaping from one set of questions to an even more dire set. How many? Stephen, obviously. And his uncle Roger. But was Tim using the word to mean two people or two hundred? Was the world overflowing with people who could read minds and no one had noticed? What did this mean for security? For privacy? Was his own secret identity going to get revealed because he made the mistake to think about it in front of the wrong person? He'd already had a taste of that, and he didn't like it one bit.

Oliver found himself leaning closer to the computer and had to force himself to step back. “Why are you telling us this?” Absently, he picked up a french fry and began to eat it. One quickly turned into two; he'd been hungrier than he realized. 

When Oliver was focused on being the Hood—when he had a case in front of him like he'd had from the moment that first ransom call had come in—he often neglected his basic needs. Food, drink, and rest rarely ranked against his higher calling. With as often as Felicity and Diggle had nagged him to take care of himself since they'd become a team, he should have become better at reading the signs. Only as he swallowed the first bite of his burger did he realize that he'd done it again. Though he barely tasted the food, he felt some of his anger and upset slip away as the hunger he'd ignored was satiated. It occurred to him that he'd been unfair to Felicity. He wasn't going to stop his vigilance—but only because he didn't trust Tim.

And maybe he'd been a little hard on Stephen, too.

He was tempted to wake the kid up to bring him into this meeting, but another soft whuffle from the exhausted teen told him that he probably wouldn't get a coherent response.

As if his action had been the permission they needed, Diggle and Felicity both picked up their burgers. For a few minutes, everyone concentrated on eating while they absorbed the information on the screen and made their own sense of what Tim had just told them.

“These are the other teens,” Tim explained while they ate. “Each was kidnapped from near their homes, one while out walking her dog, the others while on their way to school or work. There were no witnesses.”

“Professionals,” Oliver concluded. He'd assumed as much based on the gear the guard at Stephen's door had been toting. 

The crime scene pictures would be deeper in the files. He was going to have to look at them at some point, but not yet. It struck him how close he'd come to seeing his cousin in those pictures, how easily the summons to come to to the docks to collect Stephen could have been a summons to come to the morgue to identify him.

“And these kids were all...Tomorrow People?” Diggle asked. He stumbled over the name.

“No.” Felicity pointed to a line on each of the reports in turn. “They were all crazy. That's why they were targeted. They were all being treated for hallucinations, blackouts, delusions...Just like Stephen.”

Diggle shot a glance at Oliver. No one had told him about Stephen's medical history. Oliver confirmed it with a small nod.

“That's it, isn't it Tim?” Felicity pressed. “Someone is searching for teenagers who fit a certain profile of mental illness symptoms. They've probably hacked into every psychiatric and pharmacological database in the country.”

“Indeed. The early stages of developing telepathic powers bear a strong similarity to several types of psychosis.”

Felicity scowled as if Tim had contradicted her. Oliver let it go, understanding that the ease she had in accepting the presence of an AI didn't carry over into accepting the existence of superpowers.

“This nutjob is going after kids,” Diggle stated, his tone heavy with revulsion. “Worse, he's going after _sick_ kids. Oliver, we have to stop this guy. You have to stop him.”

Oliver swallowed hard. He felt the burger turning to a lump in his stomach. How was he supposed to respond? The more they learned about what was going on, the more he agreed with Diggle's assessment. The police hadn't yet connected the victims. They might never connect the victims. Never mind that they didn't know about Stephen, and thus didn't have a complete picture of what was going on. Short of Felicity hacking into their system to leave them the information—which they would hopefully see and act on immediately, rather than get caught up in where it came from—the only way to stop another attack was...

“For what it's worth, Oliver,” Tim interjected, “I am aware that you are the vigilante known as the Hood.” As if he hadn't dropped a bombshell, Tim continued, “I am fascinated to learn that an aptitude for heroics runs through Stephen’s family tree, and intrigued at how different your approaches are. I would be interested to learn more about what set you on the path you are following.”

“I didn’t tell you that!” Felicity rose in her chair as if to reach through the computer and slap a hand over TIM’s mouth, then fell back when she realized she couldn’t. “I didn’t tell him that, Oliver. I swear.” Her eyes that had been glistening with excitement just a few minutes ago now glimmered with angry tears. “Please believe me. I don’t know how he figured it out, but it wasn’t me.”

Before Oliver could say anything, Tim continued, “Ms. Smoak, indeed, did not give away your secret. Once I recognized that our communication was coming from inside a nightclub, I grew curious. It was a small matter to research your histories and collate them with activities in Starling City.” In that explanation, Oliver heard the proof that he'd been searching for. Tim had to be an Artificial Intelligence because no one else could have done what he claimed to have done so quickly.

Even though Felicity’s response have eliminated plausible deniability, Oliver spent a moment working his jaw to loosen the muscles and debating whether to reject the identification. “I know,” he said at last. “I know you wouldn’t give me up without a really good reason.” He touched her shoulder and let his hand rest there until she brought her own up and covered his fingers. Having another...person?...entity?...what was the correct term here, anyway?...brought into the fold, especially one with an as-yet-still-undetermined connection to his cousin, was dangerous, yes. It also wasn't Felicity's fault, and Oliver had to recognize that. An AI was more than any of them had come prepared to deal with, and it had just out-played them.

This confirmation of what Tim was showed Oliver that his fall down the rabbit hole was far from over. The name of Stephen's group sounded like a cult. But, what kind of cult had access to, and the aid of, a technology like Tim? So much had already been explained, and yet each explanation seemed to spawn even more questions. Though he'd probably regret it, he tamped them down. Immediate physical threats could be dealt with via instinct. Existential threats required time to think. Alcohol wouldn't hurt. Neither would a chance to get Stephen's answers to some of these questions.

“Assuming we figure out who the responsible parties are,” Tim continued, “Have you thought about what you’re going to do about them?”

“Oliver will take care of them,” Felicity answered so definitively that Oliver and Diggle both turned to look at her. She flushed, but didn’t back down. “Well, that’s what you do, isn’t it?” Mimicking Oliver’s vigilante voice, she intoned, “You have failed this city.”

“What if they're not still in Starling City?” Diggle asked. He pointed to each of the police reports. The locations of discovery were all up and down the West coast, which explained why the police hadn't already figured out the pattern—and demonstrated how much more difficult it would be to covertly bring it to their attention.

The warehouse had been cleared out last Oliver saw it. The villains wouldn't be stupid enough to return after he'd already busted them once. They could find someplace else in the city to work from; the Glades alone provided enough abandoned buildings to make checking them all logistically impossible. Not that he thought they would. The other victims were one-to-a-city. Starling had already had double its quota.

Oliver answered. “Stephen can get me anywhere I need to go—” No sooner did he say it, than he questioned his own confidence in the assertion. Stephen could teleport; that he had ample evidence of. But he also recalled Stephen, sprawled on the bed in his guest room, insisting that he couldn’t take the two of them back to the warehouse.

 _”I can’t,” he’d said._ Not “I don’t want to” or “Screw you,” but “I can’t.” His face had been stricken, as if the idea of returning to the warehouse was so horrible that Stephen couldn’t contemplate it. Oliver’d been too caught up in mysteriously appearing in his own house and having his cousin unmask him that he hadn’t thought then to see Stephen’s refusal as anything other than him being a stubborn teenager.

TIM made a clearing-throat noise. “I was hoping you weren’t going to include Stephen in any of these plans.”

“Why?” Felicity asked. “Because he’s so young? I mean, that’s why I would leave him out. He’s too young.”

“I’m afraid that if you’re planning to kill the culprits, Stephen is going to be a liability,” Tim replied. “Tomorrow People can’t kill.”

“Well, no one should be killing,” Felicity blurted out. “Killing’s really not an activity we want to encourage.” She shot an apologetic smile at Oliver. He’d heard what she said and he knew what she meant. Regardless, he agreed with her. He killed, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. He knew Diggle had killed during his time in the military. And he’d do anything to make sure that Felicity never had to kill anyone because, ultimately, it did take a toll on one’s soul. Naturally, he wouldn’t expect Stephen to be the one drawing the bow or shooting the gun. Felicity was right: he was too young for Oliver's world.

“The evolutionary leap that gave them their powers also built in the inability for them to use them to kill. It’s not that they are unwilling to. They _can’t_ ,” Tim emphasized. And there was that word again. “The way their brains are wired prevents any action that is performed with the intention of killing, which includes knowingly assisting others in the act.”

Now Oliver understood. Stephen had seen him kill one person and knew he wanted to go back to kill the others. That was why Stephen couldn’t take him back, yet why he’d been able to return on his own to the warehouse only a little while later.

“Wait,” Felicity interrupted. “What do you mean Stephen can get you anywhere you need to go? You’re the one with all the cars and motorcycles and planes and things. Do you have planes? I’ve never ridden on a private jet before.” She shook her head, dislodging that thought and getting back to the basic question. “Aren’t you the one who would be taking him along, assuming you were planning to, which we all know you weren't? Because he's too young.”

“Stephen can teleport,” Oliver told her.

“What do you mean teleport?” Felicity asked. “Like…” She popped her fingers out in an exploding motion. “I mean, there’ve been a number of exciting breakthroughs in research on Quantum Teleporting, which has some even more exciting applications to quantum computers, but anything bigger than the quantum level is—”

“The glitch in the boot locator,” Oliver interrupted. “You wanted to know about that.” He looked at her meaningfully. As intelligent as she was, she didn’t make the connection right away. “Stephen teleported me from the warehouse to the Mansion. That’s why the locator blipped the way it did.”

She still wasn’t making the connection.

“Stephen, and the other Tomorrow People, can manipulate the fabric of space-time in order to travel from one location to the next without traversing the distance in between,” Tim supplied. “Previous generations of the Tomorrow People have tried to study it to understand what they’re doing, and so far all they’ve learned is that it works.”

“He can teleport?” Felicity asked. She said the word like she’d never heard it before. “Like, really teleport?”

Oliver nodded broadly. He probably wouldn’t have believed it, either, if not for having experienced it.

“Anywhere?”

And _that_ was a detail that Oliver hadn’t given any thought to. Besides the restriction of not being able to use his powers to kill, was there anything stopping Stephen from helping himself to any locked room or secret location that he wanted? Would he have been able to let himself into Verdant regardless of whether he’d been brought? What about all the other Tomorrow People out there? Did locks and alarms have any use anymore?

“There are limitations,” Tim answered. “Familiarity with the location is one. The physical health of the teleporter is another. Their powers require energy to use; if that energy is depleted, then their powers will be, as well.”

That made sense, especially since Stephen had said basically the same thing. It didn’t address his concerns about privacy and security, but maybe Tim didn’t have those answers. Or he wasn’t willing to share them. “So, if it turns out that I need to kill the culprit, and that Stephen needs to teleport me to his location, then he has to know where we're going, but not why?” Oliver asked, just to confirm. He could see what Tim meant about Stephen being a liability.

“That is correct,” Tim answered. Nothing in his tone hinted at what he might be thinking about, whether he was excited, nervous, upset, or even worried about what could be happening next. The placidity was too eerily reminiscent of HAL-9000's tone.

Oliver gusted out a breath and rubbed the back of his neck. The more complicated plans were, the higher the odds of them failing—and this one already had way too many moving parts.

“Tim, is there any way to predict who they might be targeting next?” Diggle asked. If he had any questions about what Stephen's powers were, he apparently didn't feel that now was the time to address them.

“I'm afraid not,” Tim answered. “The profile of potential victims is way too broad. I think we are better trying to narrow down who the culprits are.”

Diggle scowled at the screen, his arms crossed in the posture he assumed when he didn't like the choices in front of him. “Does anyone else see any problems with a plan that relies on psychic powers?”

“Never mind that,” Felicity stated. The corner of her lip pulled up as if she was about to say something distasteful. It took her an uncharacteristic second to get the words together, and when she did, Oliver understood why they'd been so hard. “What about the problem of a plan that relies on lying to someone who can read minds?”

Wadding up the paper that his hamburger had been wrapped in, Oliver tossed it toward the garbage, clearing the desktop in front of him. They had work to do. “Then we'd better get our stories straight now, because once Stephen wakes up, we're not going to be able to think about this plan again.”

* * *

Oliver let himself in through the front door of the mansion. Though he hadn’t left that way—either of the times he’d left the grounds that day—he figured that anyone likely to notice already knew why he jumped out of windows in his spare time. The foyer was still, streams of late-afternoon sunlight slanting onto the floor. Nevertheless, he shut the heavy front door as quietly as he could and tiptoed to the stairs. In his ear sounded the faint hum of the transmitter, letting him know that it was on; Felicity sat on the other end, ready to update him on any leads they found in their case.

Stephen had told him that the costume was back at the house, but he hadn’t said where. When Oliver was a kid, he’d enjoyed playing and hiding in all the nooks and crannies of the massive house. No matter how many times he roamed around, he always found another corner he’d never seen and another room that no one but the cleaning staff ever entered. Then, he’d enjoyed the excitement of discovering all those hiding spots. Today, he was hoping that his cousin’s unfamiliarity with the mansion would narrow the list of potential targets down to one or two. Under the bed in Stephen’s guest room seemed like the best place to start.

“Oliver? Is that you?”

He halted, eyes searching for a place he could bolt to. Was it worth running right back out the front door? If he took the stairs two-at-a-time, he could be halfway down the upstairs hallway before anyone arrived in the foyer. He could get away and…

And what did he have to hide from in his own house?

Straightening up, he wiped the guilty expression at being caught off his face and turned, one hand on the banister, to greet his sister.

Thea came into the foyer with the painfully placed steps of a person whose patience has all been used up. Behind her trailed his other cousin, Stephen's younger brother, Luca. Thea was dressed in her tennis whites, while Luca wore khaki shorts and a faded blue t-shirt. A pair of rackets hung from her hand.

With a forced, bright smile, Thea greeted her brother. “Oliver, that was you I heard come in.” She widened her heavily-made up eyes at him in a silent plea. “Are you home for the night? And where’s Stephen? We’ve been looking for him all day. Luca thought that Stephen was doing his sleepwalking ménage-à-trios act, whatever that means.”

Luca shrugged, one side of his mouth twisting up, like he hadn't meant to be quoted on that.

His _what_? Oliver filed that one on the questions-to-be-asked-later list. He saw Thea's eyebrows raise; she didn't understand the quip either, but she still wanted a real answer to the question. Good with electronics, Oliver wasn’t. Good at lying on his feet—well, that wasn’t one of his best skills, but he’d been practicing it on Thea since the day she was born. “Stephen’s with me,” he answered. The best part was, it wasn’t a lie. “I’ve been showing him around Starling City. I just had to pick up something from the house.”

Thea tilted her head, no doubt sensing the lie beneath his words. “Really? Where did you go?” It sounded like an innocent question, but Oliver knew how quickly she could lead him into a trap of stories that didn’t match up.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to lie about this either. As long as she didn’t demand to know _how_ they’d gotten from one location to the other, he’d be fine. “We went out to the industrial park, then to the docks, got some lunch, and ended up at Verdant.”

“Sounds like a full day,” Thea answered. “Maybe you two should consider staying in tonight. I understand there are some excellent movies available On Demand. With all that running around…” Her eyes widened in a silent plea, and Oliver didn't need to be a mind-reader to know that she was begging him to take Luca off her hands.

“Why hasn’t he been answering his phone?” Luca chimed in. “I’ve tried calling him, like, a million times.” Apparently he hadn’t enjoyed spending the day with his cousin, either. “We were supposed to play some hoops together. Not a lot of people have their own private court! Stephen’s not in trouble, is he?” The last was said with a curious squint, like Luca was testing the waters for a bigger question. 

Oliver studied him. If Stephen’s powers had come from his father, did that mean that Luca had also inherited them? Pushing down the horrifying thought that he might be surrounded by people who could read his mind and who knew his secret without his permission, Oliver cleared his mind. “Luca? Can you hear me?” he thought.

Luca shifted on his feet, clearly waiting for Oliver to answer the spoken question. He gave no indication of having heard the second one.

“Where’s Mom?” Oliver asked, suddenly realizing that the house was a lot quieter than he’d thought. Even the staff didn’t appear to be present.

“She’s been out shopping with Aunt Marla all day,” Thea replied. “All. Day. Mom took one look at Aunt Marla’s hair and called the salon to demand an emergency appointment. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to come home until Mom has dragged her into every store downtown.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my mom’s hair,” Luca grumbled. His hand came up and ruffled through his own brown hair. If it had ever seen a cut that cost more than $15, Oliver would eat his designer socks.

Thea cut her cousin a glance, though she didn’t pick up the dropped argument. Even she understood that not everyone had the kind of money the Queens did. She probably didn’t grasp what that _meant_ , but she understood it at an intellectual level. “Anyway, we can’t count on them to come back any time soon and I had plans…” Again, she trailed off.

“I can stay by myself,” Luca pointed out.

“You drove all the way out here to pick up _something_ ,” Thea began, her emphasis making it clear that she doubted the something in question was worth the trip, “and left our cousin all alone at a club in a part of town that no sane person would go to without a bodyguard or a weapon. Is the club even open yet?”

Oliver winced inwardly. Thea’s ability, and determination, to pick apart his excuses never ceased to amaze him. “I’m just going to run upstairs and—“

“Oliver!” Thea parked a hand on one hip and slowly tapped the end of the tennis racket against her leg with the other. It was in moments like these that he saw their mother in her. Thea’d been little more than a bratty kid when he’d left and while he was gone, she’d grown up into a young woman. He got that in a mathematical sense; five years was a long time and a lot could change for anyone. Looking at his sister now, he could see that the strain of grief, of losing half her family, of needing to be the strong one until their mother found Walter and established a new, stable life, had been a crucible for her in the same way the island had been for him. While she still had the bubbling laugh and wicked sense of humor he remembered from the child she’d been, he could also see a sharp edge of pain underneath it all. She’d had to grow up too quickly, too soon, and it had scarred her in a way that maybe even he couldn’t understand.

The funny thing was that he’d fought some of the most dangerous people in the world and he’d gone face-to-face with some of the most vile; he’d taken on the role of defending his city against interests that the police couldn’t stomach; he had killed people, put arrows into their bodies at close range so that he could see them die and know the terror in their eyes as their life slipped from them—and was right now preparing to go kill again—and yet his little sister was the one who cowed him. Oliver dropped his head in defeat. It wasn’t like Stephen was going anywhere any time soon. He was safe at the club with Felicity and Diggle, not that Thea or Luca knew that. “Stephen’s going to wonder where I got to,” he lied.

“So why don’t we go pick him up and he can join us. We’ll play a few rounds of doubles and then you three can have a boys’ night. I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do. It would be selfish of me not to allow my brother to share the good fortune of his return with everyone in the family.” Thea’s smile was both bright and poisonous. Yes, she was definitely their mother’s daughter.

“You know,” Luca interjected, “I can hear you and I know how to tell when people don’t want me around—“

Oliver risked another sharp glance at his youngest cousin. Was Luca making an allusion to telepathy? 

Or, had he just spent enough time being Thea’s tag-along that he’d grown sick of her, too.

“—I don’t need a babysitter,” Luca continued. “You all have a pretty sweet set-up here. If you have better places to be, I don’t mind hanging out by myself. It’s not like I’ve never done it before.” He scuffed the floor with the tip of his sneaker then shoved his hands in his pockets. He didn’t mind, his body language said, but he wasn’t looking forward to it either. Oliver got a sudden insight into how Luca must be feeling: dragged across the country to visit people he could barely remember, only to be dismissed or reluctantly put up with by those who were supposed to welcome him. With everything that had been going on with Stephen, Oliver hadn’t had time to think about the fact that he had two guests—and, again, he found himself wondering what role Luca played in any of this. Did he know about his brother’s powers? Did he have his own? Would Oliver be able to help stop the bad guy from hurting any other kids? And if he didn’t help, was Luca in danger of becoming the next victim? He was so young, barely sixteen. But, since when did bad fortune care how old its victims were?

Oliver scrubbed a hand over his face in exasperation. He felt grimy and desperately in need of a few minutes to just sit down and process everything that had happened. He wouldn’t mind a stiff drink or two to help with that. “OK, I really have to take care of this…thing,” he said. No matter what else happened, he had to get his Arrow costume out of the house. If any of the cleaning people were to find it, he’d have a hell of a time explaining why it happened to be in his house—and it would probably be just the piece that Lance needed to put all his suspicions to rest. “Give me an hour to take care of what I need to do, get out to the club, and back. Then Luca and I can…” He wracked his brain, trying to think what activity would appeal to both a sixteen year old and a twenty-eight year old man. Most of what sprang to mind was illegal and he was pretty sure that neither his mother nor his Aunt Marla would approve of him getting Luca rip-roaring drunk, no matter what _he_ had been doing at age sixteen with, or without, their knowledge. “Then we’ll take in a game, or something. Do you like basketball?”

Luca’s face lit up in answer.

Oliver nodded to himself. Sports were a good guess. The Queens kept boxes at all the stadiums. And he honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken in a sporting event of any kind. It sounded like just the thing he needed. “I’ll make the arrangements while I’m out.” The stadium would need notification to get all the refreshments in place before the game started.

“I’m already on it,” Felicity said into his ear. “I didn’t know you had box seats. Why don’t you ever take us to games?”

“Just the two of us.”

Thea looked so relieved that Oliver took a second to bask in what a good big brother he was.

He only had a second before Luca’s eyes narrowed, and Oliver realized his slip. “Don’t you mean the three of us? You, me, and Stephen?”

Shit. He really hadn’t thought through this one. While he supposed he could go wake Stephen up and make him come to the game, he doubted that his cousin would appreciate that. It would also push back the time line of when they could go after the bad guy because Stephen needed sleep, and Oliver did too. Assuming Felicity and Tim figured out who they were going after any time soon, Oliver wanted to be ready to go. The sooner they got this person taken down, the safer Stephen would be. They couldn’t bring back the kids who had already died, but if Oliver could prevent another one from suffering the same fate, it would go a long way toward justifying the role of protector he had taken on.

“Oh my God, Oliver,” Felicity said into his ear, jerking him out of moment of stunned silence. “Say something. Say…I don’t know…say that Stephen has a date.”

“I believe one could be arranged,” Tim supplied.

Which led to another moment of being stunned, because how had Tim joined them on their comms? Was this how the whole rest of the mission was going to go? (Was this what it was like to be telepathic?) He’d had a lot of epiphanies about his relatives in the last few minutes, and now he sensed that he might have just discovered a point of understanding with Stephen.

Luca was still waiting for an answer and Thea was starting to look suspicious, too. No, she looked nervous, probably because she was worried that her chance at freedom was slipping away.

“Stephen has a date,” Oliver said. “I wasn’t supposed to say—”

“That’s the way to do it, Big Bro!” Luca said, a fist pump emphasizing his approval. “So that’s why you ‘left him at the club’.” He nodded at this information that snapped the world into a pattern that made sense.

Thea was shaking her head. “I can’t believe he found someone after only a few days here and I’ve been looking around the town for years without much success.”

The opening was too easy, and Thea didn’t deserve the jab anyway. Oliver couldn’t believe how easily they both accepted this lie; he didn’t want to do anything to undermine it.

“One hour,” Oliver reminded them. “Just this quick errand.”

He could see Thea debating whether to push for more information or not, and ultimately deciding not to. She probably suspected that he getting condoms or something, which was certainly more obvious a guess than his real motive. “We have time to get in a set or two,” Thea said, turning to Luca, suddenly amicable in a way that Oliver suspected she hadn’t been previously. “I’ll go easy on you.”

“Like you need to,” Luca shot back. “I’ve played a little tennis before.”

“Wii Tennis does not count,” Thea responded.

“Ouch,” Luca said. Their voices carried as they headed out the back door toward the courts.

Oliver waited until they were out of sight before resuming the trek upstairs to look for his uniform. His step was lighter than it had been and he caught himself grinning in anticipation of the basketball game. With all the unknowns and crises he'd encountered that day, solving the relatively minor problem of Thea and Luca made the much larger problems of Stephen and their as yet unknown killer feel less daunting. Nothing would stop he and his team from pulling off this mission, no matter how many mind-readers were involved.


End file.
